Back in the day people used to use something called a curb feeler. They were these wire things that would attach to the fender about here and they stuck out and when you got close to the curb they made a loud scratching noise and you knew you were close enough.

Well this driver, well he’s figured out a way to use a tire as a modern curb feeler. Pretty much destroyed the tire. And speaking of tire destroyers, we’ve got a couple here.

Number 1 right here. This tire has obviously hit something could be a piece of wood could be an expansion joint in the highway, but whatever it was it was straight across and it literally destroyed that tire. 

And speaking of destroying, we have destroyed more than a few tires at the track here at MotorWeek. And this is an example. This is extreme service and what this amounts to is just lost of hard cornering so if you use your car hard well you might expect to see something like this on your tires.

Now another thing is normal wear. You look at a tire like this one, and this one is worn nice and evenly, but you compare it to this new one and you see all these sites in the new one. All of those cuts and everything are to help the tire gain traction… help dissipate water when it rains and so on. Once they’re gone, then you have a situation where the tire loses a lot of its ability to grip the highway and its ability to get rid of water. So this tire is definitely gone and needs to be replaced.

Most important thing though of course is right here and that is using a tire pressure gauge regularly. Even though your car has TPMS on it, most of the systems, the one with just the light… not the direct read out, most of those systems only tell you when something is critical, not tell you what is best for wear and safety or anything else.

Alright, now last but not least, here we have remnants from inside of a tire. This is something we’ve seen after tires have been driven even after short distances under inflated. So if you have a tire that needs to be repaired always make sure that they demount it, look inside, see if there’s any of this crumbled rubber in there, and if there is the tire needs to be replaced. And if you have a question, or a comment, drop me a line. Right here, at MotorWeek.