{"id":5151,"date":"2015-01-27T06:16:15","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T20:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=5151"},"modified":"2020-06-20T01:14:26","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T15:14:26","slug":"where-the-rubber-literally-hits-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/home\/where-the-rubber-literally-hits-the-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Where The Rubber Literally Hits The Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"driving-in-rain-02\"<\/a>Take a look at your average sized postcard.\u00a0 Not very big, is it? Now imagine four of them at the corners of something measuring about 3 \u00d7 2 metres or so. They don\u2019t take up much of that space. However, in the typical car, this is the sort of area your tyres take up when they actually contact the road: roughly the size of a postcard. Of course, a fatter tyre will have more surface area contacting the ground \u2013 they don\u2019t just look good.<\/p>\n

Those of you who fell asleep in high school science class when they talked about friction had better wake up and pay attention now.\u00a0 Everything to do with staying safe on the road is to do with friction.\u00a0 Inside an engine or a car, friction is bad news.\u00a0 It makes an engine less efficient and wears things out more quickly \u2013 which is why you need to keep up the fluids and why you should check your oil regularly. However, you need friction and lots of it with your wheels to help your tyres grip the road and to help your brakes stop the wheels spinning.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not all that smart to head out onto the road to get an idea of how lack of friction and low grip affects your turning ability. \u00a0So try a simple experiment on a piece of smooth, freshly polished floor \u2013 a school corridor or a big kitchen will do.\u00a0 Set up a slalom course with lots of sharp twists and turns. Also include a track segment where you have to run full speed, then stop sharply.\u00a0 First of all, simulate ordinary conditions with good tyres by running this course wearing sneakers with lots of tread.\u00a0 Not too hard, is it?\u00a0 Next, have a go at simulating the effect of tyres with little or no tread: take your shoes off and do it in your socks.\u00a0 Sue yourself for damages if you fall over or crash into a wall.\u00a0 Lastly, pour water all over the floor and try again, either with the sneakers or without the sneakers.\u00a0 You can probably think of some other simulations to try, such as running the course in high heels (space saver tyres), pouring oil over the floor, having one shoe with tread and one without tread, etc.\u00a0 However, somebody\u2019s probably going to complain about what you\u2019re doing to the floor at this point.\u00a0 But you get the picture.<\/p>\n

The point of this crazy exercise is to demonstrate that if your tyres are worn or if the road is wet, you are going to lose control or not stop in time when braking. Your car might have all the safety devices in the world \u2013 traction control, EBD, lane change warnings, collision avoidance systems, rollover protection and all the rest of it \u2013 but if you\u2019ve forgotten to check your tyre tread, all these extra bits won\u2019t do an awful lot.<\/p>\n

There are four golden rules to making sure that your tyres stay on the road, gripping nicely during all the manoeuvres you put it through (heck, you bought a Porsche 911 <\/a>because it was fun to drive around corners, didn\u2019t you?):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Check your tread depth.\u00a0 The grooves should be no less than 2 mm deep. A lot of tyre shops have little cards you can use to check tread depth, but you can also make your own by playing around with a ruler, a vivid pen and a tag off a packet of sliced bread.\u00a0 Do this regularly \u2013 it\u2019s all too easy to forget to do it, but you should schedule it in.\u00a0 Maybe monthly?<\/li>\n
  2. Make sure that your tyres have the correct pressure.\u00a0 Each car has its own preferred pressure. You\u2019ll find this helpfully stamped somewhere around the car \u2013 under the fuel flap, on a plate in the driver\u2019s door or in the vehicle handbook.\u00a0 This may need to be adjusted if you\u2019re doing a lot of towing or have a heavy load to carry (or if you do a lot of high speeds \u2013 but if you\u2019re a racing driver, you\u2019ll have a crew that helps you in this department).\u00a0 Don\u2019t guess \u2013 use a proper gauge.\u00a0 A lot of air pumps have good gauges on the hose thingummy.<\/li>\n
  3. \"wear_patterns\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Rotate your tyres regularly.\u00a0 Different tyres wear at different speeds depending on your drivetrain, your suspension and where the loads are in your car.\u00a0 Rotating means that your tyres wear out more or less evenly and the ones that really do a lot of work will have plenty of tread.\u00a0 They day that every 10,000 kms is a good schedule for rotating tyres.\u00a0 Exactly how you rotate your tyres will depend (again) on your drivetrain and whether or not your spare tyre is a space-saver or a full-sized one.<\/li>\n
  5. Keep up the wheel alignments \u2013 twice a year is recommended.\u00a0 This also helps the tyres to wear evenly, so you know that if you\u2019ve got 2 mm on one part of the tyre, it\u2019s going to be like that on all the other parts of the tyre, too.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Tyres are not something I\u2019m ever going to neglect.\u00a0 Not since the time I was in a crash that happened because the car lost traction thanks to bald tyres.\u00a0 The driver wasn\u2019t hurt and neither was I, but the car was written off.\u00a0 You don\u2019t forget a lesson like that in a hurry.<\/p>\n

    Safe and happy driving,<\/p>\n

    Megan http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-zaim\/vashi-dengi-zaim.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Take a look at your average sized postcard.\u00a0 Not very big, is it? Now imagine four of them at the corners of something measuring about 3 \u00d7 2 metres or so. They don\u2019t take up much of that space. However, in the typical car, this is the sort of area your tyres take up when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5151"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11811,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5151\/revisions\/11811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}