Making sure you and the ones  you love are as safe as possible when you are travelling any distance should be first and foremost on your mind.

With all the rain we get this time of year it’s important to make sure that your tyres are in good enough shape to carry you and your family safely to your destination.

How are your tyres?
Make sure you check your tyres on a regular basis. Bald tyres significantly reduce the tyre’s hold on wet roadways, and offer little resistance to hydroplaning. When your tyres run over water, the water is displaced and it needs somewhere to go quickly. The best place is between the treads of your tyres. If your tyres are bald, the water has no place to go and you end up skidding across the water, like a boat.

Hydroplaning

While hydroplaning your vehicle rides on top of the water, like a water skier on a lake. In less than a second, your car can completely lose contact with the road, putting you in immediate danger of sliding out of your lane. This usually happens at higher speeds, over 40 miles per hour. Try to imagine your vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed on a sheet of ice: that image approximates what will happen if you try to brake or steer while hydroplaning.

The 3 main factors that contribute to hydroplaning:

• Vehicle speed. As speed increases, wet traction is considerably reduced. Since hydroplaning can result in a complete loss of traction and vehicle control, you should always reduce speed, paying attention to the traffic around you.
• Tyre treads depth. As your tyres become worn, their ability to resist hydroplaning is reduced.
• Water depth. The deeper the water, the sooner you will lose traction, although even thin water layers can cause a loss of traction, including at low speeds.

How do I know if my tyres are really that bald?

In short, making sure your tyres are wet road ready should be at the top of your list this summer. Remember, it’s better to be safe than sorry. 

Rotating tyres is important part of tyre maintenance as it helps create an even tread wear leading to longer tread lasting tyres.

To understand why, consider how a front wheel drive vehicle which bears all of the steering, braking and driving forces on the front axle wears at a much faster rate than the rear tyres. The opposite can be said for a rear wheel drive vehicle. Therefore, rotating tyres for these vehicles is important for the optimum level of tyre life.

How often should tyres be rotated?

You can usually find a rotation pattern or period in the your owner’s manual, however if this cannot be located then you should be rotating your tyres every 5,000 – 10,000kms.

This should be ignored if you notice uneven or irregular wear, which can occur from simply hitting a pothole as off wheel alignment can cause uneven tyre wear.

Tyre rotation pattern

You can use the following patterns only where the tyres are the same type and size, but note that not all types of tyres can be rotated in the patterns shown below (including tyres with uni-directional and asymmetric tread designs).

Cross Rotation

Cross Rotation

Cross Rotation

A cross pattern can be used on any front or rear wheel drive vehicle equipped with non-unidirectional tyres and is known to provide the best results.

4 Wheel Drive

4x4 Pattern

The pattern means tyres from both axles are crossed and installed on the opposite side, and is best suited to 4×4 vehicles mainly operated in 4-wheel drive mode.

Straight Rotation

Straight Rotation

Developed in the very early years of radial tyres, straight rotation simply means replacing the front to the rear and vice-versa.

Tyre Pressures

After rotating your tyres, you should check the inflation pressures and make any adjustments accordingly as outlined in the owner’s manual as front end rear tyres can often require different tyre pressures.
If your tyres are under inflated, you may end up with an uneven tread wear defeating the purpose of rotating them in the first place!

Maintaining correct air pressure in your tyres enhances their performance and reliability, leading to longer lasting tyres and better fuel economy which saves you money. That’s why it’s important for your safety and your wallet (not to mention the environment) to be checking tyre pressures regularly.

Correct tyre pressures are not actually determined by the tyre size or type as commonly thought, but rather by the driving application (such as speed) and the vehicle’s load.

Monitor tyre pressure

Through the process known as permeation, car tyres slow lose pressure everyday in varying amounts (kilopascals) depending on the weather conditions (the greater the temperature, the more pressure is lost).
The importance of tyres can often be overlooked by drivers, but they are the only part of a vehicle that makes contact with the road and as such can endure a lot of forces and flexing day to day which also diminishes tyre pressure.

Accordingly it is important to monitor the pressure of your tyres, and as a rule of thumb this should be done every other time you fill up with petrol from maximum performance.
You should also occasionally check the pressure of your spare tyre.

Recommended tyre pressures

The correct amount of tyre pressure (psi) for your vehicle can be found in the owner’s manual or the tyre placard (usually found on the inside of the door sill, glove box, under the bonnet or fuel filler cap). The placard shows the vehicle manufacturers recommended tyre pressure and tyre sizes.

How to check tyre pressure

Contrary to popular belief you cannot accurately gauge the pressure of your tyres by simple judging the sidewall appearance. To do this properly, you need an accurate air pressure gauge which you may need to buy as you may not necessarily find at your local petrol station as they are often inaccurate due to being misused and exposed to the elements.

Cold tyres

To properly check your tyre pressure, ensure that your vehicles tyres are cold. Generally, cold air pressure means you haven’t driven further than 1-2 kilometres and the vehicle hasn’t been sitting in direct sunlight for a long period of time prior to checking the air pressure.

Tyre pressure tips

• Tyre pressures when the tyres get hotter from driving. This means it’s important to not over inflate your tyres.
• Driving at high speeds (over 120km/h) doubles the rate at which your tyres were when compare to driving at 80 km/h.
• A tyre that is underinflated by 20% reduces the tyres life cycle by up to 30%
• A general rule of thumb is to add 28Kpa (4 PSI) on top of your Minimum Compliance Plate Pressure
• Under-inflated tyres are more harmful to the environment as they cause greater rolling resistance which in turn leads to greater fuel consumption.

It’s happen to the best of us – you’ve gotten stranded on the road side with a flat tyre and had to call road side assistance for help, only to be left waiting for hours because you don’t know how to change the flat tyre yourself.
Changing a tyre is actually a simple task, and it has always surprised me how few people know how to do it correctly, or at least give it a go. For those that don’t mind getting their hands dirty, all it takes is a bit of elbow grease.

12 steps to changing a tyre

We have compiled to following easy-to-follow steps to assist you in changing your next flat tyre.

1. Select a suitable place to change the tyre

It’s important for your own safety that you find a stable place to work.  You should avoid hills and soft ground and instead look for a firm, level surface where you can pull over and park your car a safe distance from any passing traffic.  At this point, if you haven’t already turned on your hazard lights, then you should do so to alert passer-byers.

2. Put the car into park and apply the car’s handbrake

Putting the car into park (or first/reverse gear in a manual transmission) and applying the handbrake ensures that the car will not roll whilst you are working, which would be very dangerous and could cause serious harm.
Additionally, you may also like to place a heavy object, such as a brick behind the front wheel (or rear wheel, depending on your position).

3. Remove the jack and spare tyre

These are both generally found together in the boot of your vehicle, usually underneath some carpet and a piece of protective wood.
Rather than carrying the tyre, roll it around to the appropriate tyre that needs changing and place it on its side to ensure it doesn’t roll away.
Secondly, place the jack underneath the frame of your vehicle close to the tyre you are going to change.  It’s important that you place it in such a spot that it will meet the metal area of the frame to prevent any damage to the chassis such cracking when you start lifting.

If you are unsure where to place the jack, then you should refer to your owner’s manual.  Some modern cars have a strip of moulded plastic running along the bottom you need to avoid.  Generally there is a marking or notch just behind the front wheel wells or in front for the rear on modern vehicles, however if you have an older car and can’t find any indicator, than place the jack just behind the front wheel or just in front of the rear tyre on the metal beam on the cars frame.

4. Raise up the jack until it is just supporting, but not lifting the car

Making sure that the jack is lifting straight up and down, raise the jack up until it is just touching the underside of the car. You do not want to actually left any part of the car off the ground at this time.

5. Loosen the wheel nuts.

To prevent the tyre from spinning in the air, the wheel nuts need to be slightly loosened whilst on the ground. To get to the wheel nuts, you may have to remove a hub cap first.
To loosen, use the wrench that accompanied that jack (or a standard cross wrench) and place the wrench on the lug nut, then turn in a counter clockwise direction.
Quite often it will take a fair bit of force before the lug nut will start to loosen, a handy tip is to stand or stomp on the wrench and use your body’s weight to force the lug nuts free.

6. Use the jack to lift the tyre off the ground

Pump or crank the jack until the tyre is high enough from the ground to remove the flat tyre and swap it with your spare. While you are lifting, check that the car remains stable – if you notice any signs of instability you should begin to lower the jack immediately and rectify before fully raising the tyre from the ground.
If you notice the car is starting to roll slightly, than you can attempt to chock the tyres to prevent movement using heavy, solid objects. You should also be weary of the angle the jack is lifting in – it should be upright and not leaning on an angle what so ever.

7. Remove lug nut completely

Now that the wheel is safely off the ground, and high enough to swap the tyres turn the lug names counter clockwise until they are loose and then remove them all together.
Put them in your pocket or in a safe place nearby so that you don’t lose them and have them ready for the spare.

8. Remove the flat tyre

Pull the tyre toward you and remove from the hub completely, placing the tyre flat on the ground underneath the car as a precaution. In the unlikely event that the jack fails you will be protected from serious injury.

9. Place the spare tyre onto the hub

Take your time and carefully align the rim of the spare tyre with the wheel bolts on the hub, and then put the lug nuts on with your hand until they are snug. Don’t use the wrench as you will be further tightening the bolts once the wheel is back safely on the ground.
Once they are snugly in place, use the wrench to tighten the nuts as much as you can by turning in a clockwise direction.
You should avoid  tighten one bolt at a time, rather move around the tyre in a star like fashion giving each bolt a slight turn for ensuring they are all equally tight. This insures that the tyre is balance and safely secured for driving.

10. Lower the car to ground level

Lower  the car back to ground level, but do not completely put all the weight of the car back on the ground.
Now use the wrench to complete tighten the bolts as much as you can.

11. Return the car to the ground and remove the jack

Completely lower the car to the ground, remove the jack and use the wrench one last time to make sure the bolts are as tight as they can do. Replace the hub cab if applicable.

12. Put the flat tyre in the boot

Roll the flat to the rear of the car and place the jack, wrench and flat back in the place where you took the spare from.
You should take the flat tyre to your mechanic or local service centre to be repaired. This is usually pretty cheap and if they cannot repair the tyre they will be able to dispose of it correctly for you and sell you a new replacement spare.