The Tires

What you want:

• a smooth feel to the tire sidewall
• tread thickness
• even tread wear

Ok, I have a feeling you have no idea what I am talking about. It's probably easier to tell you what you don't want, than what you want.

When you look at a tire, you will probably be looking at the sidewall. You can tell it is the sidewall because it has all the writing on it. Besides that it is the side if the tire. The tread is the part of the tire that makes contact with the road. So you will kind of be looking across the treads.

Believe it or not, tires have manufacturer dates on them. These dates are on only one side of the tire, therefore, depending what side of the tire is facing you, you may or may not see the date.

At any rate, tires get old just like everything else. Some people think that just because the tire has little tread wear, that it is automatically still good. This is not necessarily the case. Rubber tires age the same way other rubber parts of the car do.

Tires that are older may have cracks in the sidewall and look dry. These cracks can vary from actual cracks that can be seen with the naked eye, to very tiny little cracks that are so close together, you can't see them. In addition to cracks, you don't want a tire that has a chunk of rubber missing out of it, or one that has a bubble in the sidewall. These will be obvious to you when you look at the tire.

When you look across the treads, first of all, you want there to actually be treads. If the tire looks smooth or almost smooth where the treads should be, this is bad. You might have heard the term "bald" tire. It is pretty much self explanatory.

Besides actually seeing treads, you want the treads to look like they have worn evenly.

Under certain conditions, tires can wear different ways. When it is under inflated, for example, you will see the tread has worn more on the edges than in the center of the tread. The opposite goes for over inflated tires. It will be more worn in the center, than along the edges.

A big part of how tires wear, is the alignment of the front of the car's suspension system, and how the tires make contact with the road.

I know this sounds complicated, but it isn't. Basically, the suspension system consists of shock absorbers, struts(which are basically the same as shock absorbers, except they look a little different), and various other parts that function almost like arms and wrists.

Real quick, imagine you are in the middle of the car with both your arms straight out to the sides. Now imagine your hands are the tires. If you move one arm forward or backward, the other follows automatically. Now imagine your hands and wrists doing the same thing. So if your arms and hands arent's lined up straight, it will affect how the tire contacts the road.

Maybe I should have started with the alignment and how it affects the tires. I'm doing it backwards. Anyway. To make a long story shorter, any extreme tire wear is bad. This includes a tire that has worn evenly, but has no tread left.

So you see a car that you want but it has 2 bad tires. If the rest of the car is in decent shape mechanically, buying 2 new tires is worth it. On the other hand, if the car has extreme tire wear, unless it's even, chances are there are serious front end problems that are potentially very costly. This will probably end up being more of a headache than it is worth.