Skills for Success

Checking Your Tires

What to look for when checking your tires –

  • This is an important skill you should know how to do. Mainly know how to identify potential problems with your tires, this could be knowing how to spot dry rot and wear.
  • Dry rot is a common problem, tires with dry rot are more susceptible to blowouts and punctures. This can happen over time, due to environmental conditions such as extreme heat, this in turn causing tires to dry out or crack. When inspecting your tires, look to see if there are any small cracks, this can be an indicator of deterioration. However, if the cracks are deep or big it’s best to replace the tires as a safety precaution. Here are a few examples of dry rot.
Retrieved from: https://www.ztireexpress.com/what-is-tire-dry-rot/
Retrieved from: https://www.agcoauto.com/content/news/p2_articleid/93
Retrieved from: https://www.hdforums.com/forum/tri-glide-rg3-and-freewheeler-models/1447634-rear-tires-change-or-not.html
  • The next common thing to identify on tires is wear. There are many different types of tire wear patterns that can occur. I’m going to give examples of what you might see, because for this it’s easier to see from examples.

Here are the different types of patterns you may see and what they indicate:

Image from: https://www.facebook.com/conradstire/photos/the-tread-wear-pattern-of-your-tires-provides-information-on-the-well-being-of-y/10156785770840742/?_rdr
  • Now if you’re looking at your tires in real time and get confused, you can search up other examples. Just know if the wear looks horrendous like some of these photos, it might be time to change your tires.