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The world of car tyres is awash with technical terms. You don’t need to know them but they sometimes come in useful. So try answering the following questions, each of which has only one correct answer. The answers are at the foot of the list and for those planning to scroll down and cheat – we’ll know what you did!

1: What is BS AU159f?

A: The British Standard for puncture repairs to car tyres.
B: The British Standard for puncture repairs to Australian car tyres.
C: A code to access holiday discount vouchers on the Internet.

2: What do the initials RWL stand for?

A: Reprogrammable Warning Lights.
B: Right Wheel Latitude.
C: Raised White Letters

3: What is an aspect ratio?

A: The number of attacks per bird experienced if you bend over in a chicken run.
B: The ratio of a car tyre’s height to its width expressed as a percentage.
C: The ratio of tyre pressure (in lbs per sq. in.) to tyre life (in miles).

4: What is a car tyre’s bead for?

A: Holding it on the wheel rim.
B: Keeping it in balance.
C: Threading on a string.

5: What is a butyl liner?

A: A rubber cruise ship.
B: A fine layer in a tyre that prevents sudden deflation if a puncture occurs.
C: A fine layer in a tyre that makes fitting it easier.

6: What is calendaring?

A: The method of assessing tyre wear per month.
B: Adding markings that denote when a tyre was made.
C: Part of the tyre-making process.

7: What is carbon black?

A: The measurable polluting content of a carbon footprint.
B: The marks left on a snooker table by the last ball to be potted.
C: A filler material used to make grey rubber into black tyres.

8: What is de-vulcanisation?
A: A process of mechanical and chemical decomposition that affects tyres.
B: The post court-martial execution of the first officer of the Starship Enterprise.
C:  The final process in tyre manufacture.

9: What is a contact patch?

A: A damp chamois leather pad used with the electric chair.
B: The area of a tyre’s tread in contact with the road at any given time.
C: A place where you go to meet with business associates.

10: What is deformation?

A: An offence you can be sued for?
B: The flexing of a tyre in response to the forces acting on it.
C: The distortion a tyre undergoes during fitment.

11: What is an E Marking?

A: A marking all post-June 1997 tyres carry to show they comply with European requirements.
B: A marking carried by all post-May 1986 tyres to show they may be sold in Yorkshire.
C: A marking all post-July 1990 tyres carry to show their sell-by date.

12: What is a sipe?

A: A medium sized, skulking wading bird with short legs, a long straight bill and poor spelling skills.
B: A tyre-fitter’s contraction of the words ‘stand pipe’.
C: A narrow slit between two blocks in a tyre’s tread, designed to dispel water and enhance grip.

Answers
1A
2C
3B
4A
5B
6C
7C
8A
9B
10B
11A
12C

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All car tyres may seem to be the same but they aren’t. Road tyres have different characteristics designed to maximise their performance for specific types of use. However, these differences pale into insignificance when you consider the different tyres offered for competition use.

Take rally car tyres. These must cope with a huge array of surfaces in innumerable different climatic conditions. In addition, rally car tyres usually have to be road legal and must last longer than racing car tyres.

Examining two types of rally car tyre in more detail gives an idea of how the various factors in the tyres interact. Gravel tyres have to clear away the top coating of soft dirt or loose gravel, just as car tyres must clear away rainwater. To do this, they have big, chunky blocks that are made of relatively soft rubber. This lets the tread’s blocks grip while protecting the reinforcing plies that lie beneath them. The tyre tread and carcass’s being rigid enough to resist tearing while being sufficiently elastic to return to their initial shape guarantee toughness and a long life.

Snow/ice tyres can boast an effective grip-enhancing addition. Some can have up to 380 carbide-tipped studs in their tread. This is tough on the surface beneath the tyre but the surface can be tough on the studs themselves. At 75mph, each stud hits the snow or ice 17 times…per second! The impressive part – other than that (most of) the studs are still present when the car stops – is that the car is running on a total of about 50 studs at any one time. The total area the studs offer is about the size of a postage stamp.

In some instances, the tyres have no tread at all. Such tyres are called slicks and are used in drag racing. ‘Top Fuel’ dragsters are the fastest and can reach 330mph in less than 4.45 seconds – the time it takes them to cover the quarter mile. Accelerating faster than the space shuttle launch vehicle or a catapult-launched jet fighter requires as much grip as can be found.

It’s common for all kinds of dragsters to do something memorable. The driver places the car so its rear tyres are sitting in two puddles of water laid down near the start of the drag strip. The driver then applies power, spinning the rear wheels in the water. The immediate result is huge clouds of rubber smoke and steam around the tail end of a car that’s standing virtually still at practically full throttle. Yet this isn’t for show. After a ‘burn out’ like this, the tyres’ tread surfaces are extremely hot and sticky – and therefore grippy.

Often, drag racing car tyres look distinctly soft as the car approaches the start line. This is unsurprising, as the tyre pressure used is around the 12 to 15 psi mark. Why so soft? For two reasons. Soft tyres give better grip but they have another benefit. As the wheels rotate faster, the tyres enlarge. This is like putting bigger wheels on the same car; drivers get a higher top speed from the tyres’ radial expansion.

As you can see, even from just these two forms of motor sport, specialist car tyres are essential. They do what’s asked of them and in doing so, they increase the performance of the car involved in whatever sport is concerned. Think about this the next time you find yourself believing car tyres are all the same!

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All car tyres are round, black things with sidewalls and treads, and they need to be inflated from time to time. So, they’re all the same, aren’t they? In fact they aren’t all the same and to say they are is just like saying all houses are the same.

This is about the difference between common aspects and specifics. True, every house has a roof, doors and windows but a two-up, two-down terraced property and a mansion, though they’re both houses, are clearly very different. The same goes for tyres, albeit less obviously. Here, we can consider five distinct types of tyre, and these will illustrate the differences.

Standard or all-season tyres are the most commonly fitted type of car tyre. As their name implies, they’re the jack-of-all-trades of the tyre world. They work well in both dry and wet conditions. They aren’t too noisy on most road surfaces and their fairly hard rubber compound gives them a long life. These factors represent compromises, of a kind that work for most requirements – and for most drivers.

Performance tyres, on the other hand, balance certain factors in order to enhance certain characteristics. Car tyres of this kind don’t last as long as standard tyres but their softer compound yields better grip. Similarly, performance tyres don’t appreciate colder conditions, which is why they’re often called ‘summer tyres’. They also don’t readily suffer significant wear. Performance cars – and demanding drivers – deserve performance tyres.

Winter tyres are car tyres for use when snow and ice are liable to be encountered. These tyres have a more marked tread pattern, which is great for giving the best grip and preventing snow and ice from packing in the treads’ grooves. They are also made using compounds that remain flexible even when thermometers are reading low. Some even have integral metal studs to maximise grip. The costs for these specific characteristics are twofold. First, winter tyres create a lot of noise, even on smooth roads. Second, in normal conditions, they wear very quickly and can damage the road surface. The kind of conditions where you’d need winter tyres are obvious, as is the fact that they can’t be used year-round.

All-terrain tyres are the top of the range tyres for unfriendly conditions. Their big, open, chunky treads can grip on loose surfaces such as gravel and sand. Knowing that such surfaces are liable to be in rough country, manufacturers make all terrain tyres with tougher, stiffer sidewalls so they’re less susceptible to damage from potholes and debris. These tyres are sturdy and generally long-lived, at the cost of a considerable noise level on smooth tarmac. There is a still more specialized tyre for adverse conditions. Mud tyres have an extremely large tread block pattern and are suitable for use only in muddy conditions.

Car tyres of this kind are often used on the kind of four-wheel drive vehicles that are actually taken on rough roads; this includes 4x4s that specifically go off-road regularly.

Finally, run-flat tyres are car tyres that are capable of still being used even though they’re no longer inflated because of a puncture. Now appearing on more and more modern cars, they allow you to retain control of the vehicle despite being at zero pressure. However, they can run flat only for a given distance and at reduced speed – your car’s handbook will have the necessary details.

Which type of car tyres you choose to buy is clearly a ‘horses for courses’ decision, largely depending on what you want from the tyres. However, should you be in any doubt, the staff at any good tyre bay will be happy to give you their professional opinion on what type will be best for you.

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Here’s something about car tyres that’s both interesting and thought provoking. Take a look at the sole of your shoe. Why? Well, you may not know it like the back of your hand but here, you’re looking at your shoe’s sole for a reason. The area of the sole of your shoe is approximately the same as that of a car tyre’s contact patch, the amount of tread it has on the road at any one time. Multiply this area by four and it represents all that’s stopping your car, and anyone on board, from sliding off into the scenery when travelling.

Now, say your car weighs one tonne. The car tyres’ four contact patches therefore have to keep one tonne on the straight and narrow. Or do they? In fact, they must often cope with greater loads. When you drive round a corner, you feel centripetal force (not centrifugal force) pushing you towards the outside of the car. Your car tyres create this force and while it’s unlikely that your car can create a cornering force of 1g, it might well do so under very heavy braking. So, during accelerationg, cornering and braking, that four shoe soles’ area is coping with keeping you on the road, rain or shine, summer or winter.

The law says that the minimum depth of the tread on your car tyres must be 1.6 millimetres, across the central ¾ of the tread around the complete circumference of the tyre. If you haven’t this amount of tread on your tyres, you might get 3 penalty points on your driving licence and a £2,500 fine. This is per tyre, so multiply it by four for the worst-case scenario.

There is, however, an even worse case scenario that affect car tyres. RoSpa, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents carried out some tests. On a hot rolled asphalt surface, a car with barely legal tyres travelled 36.8 per cent further before stopping. On a smooth concrete surface, the same car went 44.6 per cent further. Unsurprisingly, RoSpa recommends tyres be changed when the tread depth falls to 3 millimetres.

There’s another risk that worn car tyres create in the rain. You may have winter tyres, summer tyres, asymmetric tyres or run flat tyres. All have treads and when the treads are badly worn, their contact patches lose their ability to quickly dispose of surface water. When a tyre aquaplanes, it’s riding on a thin film of rainwater it can’t get rid of. Then, you have no appreciable grip and therefore very little control. There’s a memorable black and white picture, taken when Dunlop Tyre’s technical team identified aquaplaning in 1962. In it, a Mark Two Jaguar is shown at speed on a wet test track. White segments painted on its tyres’ walls show that the front tyres aren’t rotating at all – scary. Car tyres may have improved since then but like its cause, aquaplaning remains.

So, running your car tyres down the hilt tread-wise may be economical but it could cost you far more than you thought possible. Happily, you can keep a check on your tyre treads’ health. All tyres have tread wear indicator bars moulded into the tread pattern. When – or preferably a little before – these are no longer lower than the tread surface, it’s new tyre time. You can also buy a tread depth gauge from most motor parts outlets. Failing all else, you can check the tread depth using an old 10 pence piece. The ring of dots around the rim indicates 1.6 millimetres when the edge of the coin is pushed into the remaining tread. However, Matthew Dent didn’t retain this element when designing the ‘Royal Shield’ coins introduced in summer 2008.

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In the past, people used to change car tyres by hand. Some still might but this arduous procedure has been semi-automated for a long time. Here’s how professional tyre fitters change a car tyre, using a tyre machine.

 As the tyre to be replaced will probably have been in service for a long time, it’ll be reluctant to part from its wheel. The beads, where they abut the wheel, will be firmly stuck and this is where the tyre machine’s first weapon comes into play. After unscrewing and removing the valve to let the air out of the tyre, the fitter will position the wheel in the jaws of the bead breaker. One press of a pedal and the bead is ‘broken’ – separated from its location.

 Next, the fitter will lay the wheel flat on the tyre machine, clamping it into place. Since wheels – especially alloy ones – are both delicate and expensive, the equipment is designed to not touch the wheel rims directly. Having levered the upper bead upwards over the wheel rim, the fitter will engage the hooked head of the tyre machine under the bead. Another pedal press sets the machine rotating, to skin the tyre off the upper rim. Repeating this process for the lower bead separates the old tyre from the wheel.

 A little preparation of the wheel comes next. The old valve body is sawn off inside the wheel and if necessary, the inner faces of the wheel rims are cleaned. The old wheel balancing weights are removed. Having pulled a new valve into place with a special tool, the fitter will coat the wheel rims and the new tyre’s beads with a special compound. This is a lubricant that eases the fitting process though sometimes, a material with sealing properties may be needed.

 The penultimate stage of tyre fitting is essentially the reverse of the removal of the old tyre. The fitter uses the tyre machine to force the new tyre on to the wheel, bead by bead. Finally, a compressed air line is used to inflate the tyre, until its beads pop outwards to seal against the inner faces of the wheel rim. Throughout the process, the tyre fitter has done the controlling, while electricity and compressed air have done the heavy work.

 This leaves just the wheel balancing. The fitter will have already positioned the tyre correctly in relation to the wheel, using a coloured dot marking on the tyre. However, balance weights are virtually always required and there’s a machine to help with this task. The tyre fitter will clamp the wheel onto the machine. When the guard is closed and the machine starts, it will take the wheel up to a fixed speed, usually about 200 revolutions per minute.

 Using its onboard sensors and electronics, the balancing machine points out where the wheel weights should be fitted and how much they should weigh. Having fitted the weights – stick-on or clamp-on as appropriate – the fitter will run the machine once more, fine-tuning the balance with other weights if necessary.

 As we can see, what used to be an hour or more’s hard work is done in minutes. What’s more, if you watch the proceedings from the waiting area, you’ll know exactly what’s happening in the tyre bay!

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Car tyres might seem to be pretty mundane things but a little research reveals some fascinating facts and figures about them…

The first inflatable tyre was made of leather

In 1887 John Boyd Dunlop developed the first practical pneumatic tyres; not a car tyres but ones for use on his son’s bicycle. However, his December 1888 patent only lasted two yours – Scottish inventor Robert William Thomson had patented the idea in France 41 years earlier.

Dunlop Tyres is the sole supplier of tyres to British Touring Car Championship for 2003 to 2006 and the V8 Supercars Championship from 2002 onward. The company also supplies tyres to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters and the American Le Mans Series.

In 1910, the BF Goodrich Company was the first to extend the life of car tyres by adding carbon black to tyres’ rubber compound.

In 1946, Michelin introduced the first radial car tyre.

Car tyres leave their mark. In the US, nearly 50 million pounds of rubber is worn off tyres every week. That’s enough rubber to make 3.25 million new car tyres.

Americans throw away between 240 and 260 million worn car tyres every year. Car tyres make approximately half a million cubic yards of landfill every year in New York State alone.

Not car tyres but truck tyres this time – it takes half a barrel of crude oil to make just one.

In Australia in July 1964, Donald Campbell set a new land speed record and took the car tyre to a new level. His car, the Bluebird CN7, had tyres 8.2 inches (21cm) wide and 52 inches (1.32 metres) high. Each tyre weighed 50 lbs (23 kg) and was filled with nitrogen at a pressure of 100psi. The car reached 403.10 mph.

A top Formula One pit crew can change all four car tyres and refuel in just 3 seconds.

Knowing how to maximize the life of your car tyres isn’t only a simple way of saving money in the long run. Looking after your car tyres also keeps you safe and legal; being neither can be very costly in more than a financial sense.

Run the tyres at the right pressure

This is a good starting point. Too little pressure wears the edges of the tread prematurely, lets the tyres flex too much and can cause overheating. Too much pressure increases the wear on the centre of the tread. Remember that, comfort and safety aren’t the only issues – running tyres at the wrong pressure is illegal.

Make sure your wheels are properly aligned

Misaligned wheels are another sure-fire tyre killer. Misalignment can make your tyres wear unevenly, wear the inside or outside edges and cause problems with both braking and steering. Moreover, a significant amount of such wear means you’ll have to throw your tyres away far too soon.

Drive sympathetically

 Your car may have traction control and ABS but you can still trash the tyres effectively despite them. How? By driving aggressively. Make sure you accelerate as gently as possible whenever you can and use the brakes carefully, not as though every stop is an emergency stop. Don’t forget that unnecessarily hard cornering shortens the life of your tyres. On a front wheel drive car, the front tyres wear more quickly because they have to transmit power to the road, and take steering and braking forces.

Drive slower

Consistently driving fast will wear out your car tyres sooner.

Choose the right tyres

You could get ‘long life’ tyres for your, which wear more slowly though they tend to be a little noisy. Tyres having a softer rubber compound will be nice and quiet and will wear more quickly. Always follow the tyre fitter’s recommendation of the best compromise for your needs.

Always keep your car under cover

All car tyres degrade over time. If you can keep your car in a garage, out of the sun, you can be sure your tyres will last longer. If you see a fine lattice of cracks has appeared in your tyres’ sidewalls after, say, five years, the tyres are unsafe and must be replaced.

Give your tyres a break

Remember that ‘traffic-calming’ measures shorten the life of your tyres but you can help your tyres out by driving intelligently. Always cross speed bumps slowly. Never straddle speed bumps. Instead, make sure that the only wheels on one side of your car pass over them. Keep an eye out for potholes, avoiding them where you can. When parking, make sure you never mount a kerb. Apart from making life easier for your tyres (and your wheels), these actions will prevent your wheels being knocked out of alignment, leading to wear – and possibly worse.

Using these proven top tips means your car tyres will last longer. This means you’ll save money by not having to replace your tyres before their useful life ends.

Have you ever noticed that tyres have moulded markings on their sidewalls? You’ll probably have spotted the maker’s name but does the rest mean anything to you? Can you tell what 205/70R14 88 T is all about? Perhaps not yet but understanding these codes could save your life. Why? If they show your tyres aren’t the right ones for your car you can arrange replacements.

We can start by breaking down the example above; the markings denote the tyre size, construction, and load and speed rating. How? Like this…

205 – This is the width of the tyre’s section in millimetres. The section 205 is a little over eight inches wide.

70 – This is the tyre’s aspect ratio, the sidewall’s height expressed as a percentage of its width. Here, the height is 70 per cent of the width. ‘Low profile’ tyres are fashionable so aspect ratio figures go as low as 30. Ultra-low tyres like this give tremendous grip but you pay for it, in a poorer ride quality and very little protection for your wheels against kerbs, potholes and speed bumps.

R – The next letter indicates the tyre’s construction. Here, R means radial.

14 – This next number is also simple. The figure 14 refers to the diameter of wheel the tyre will fit, in inches.

88 – Not so simple but extremely important. This tyre load index is a code for the maximum load capacity of the tyre when driven at its maximum rated speed. The figure 88 denotes a rating of 560 kilograms. Car tyres need to be correctly rated for load.

T – The last letter indicates the tyre’s speed rating. The letter T means the tyre can cope with extended use at a maximum speed of 118 miles per hour. The top speed rating is Z, which appear on tyres for cars capable of maintaining 149mph and above.

There are other tyre sidewall markings but most are for the attention of the tyre fitter. Markings show the tyre complies with EEC, ECE and US regulations. There might be an arrow symbol showing the tyres’ direction of rotation and there’ll be a ‘TWI’ mark indicating where the running surface’s tread wear indicator lies. There will also be a safety warning, perhaps the country of manufacture, whether the tyre is tubed or tubeless, and coloured markers showing the fitter where to fit the tyre in relation to the wheel’s valve.

All these are largely for the fitter’s information but there’s one marking you’re advised to note. The last four digits in the ‘DOT’ code reveal the tyres’ date of manufacture. Four-digit codes began after 2003 so if you see, for example, the code 3 0 0 8, the tyre was made in the 30^th week of 2008. You should never use tyres over 6 years old but a good tyre fitter won’t fit ‘new’ tyres that are beyond their sell-by date.

It’s true that checking your tyre markings could save your life, simply because underrated tyres could fail, especially under high speed/load conditions. The right tyres could save you something else –under-specified car tyres can invalidate your insurance.

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Your car tyres are all that keep you on the road and in dealing with heat, cold, wet and dry conditions and various surfaces, they have a hard life. Knowing what tyres are made of and how they’re built will help you understand how they cope.

Car tyres are built round an inner liner of halobutyl rubber sheet with additives that help keep air inside the tyre. The next part out is the body ply, which consists of three layers, one of rubber, one of reinforcing fabric and a second layer of rubber. Rayon, nylon, polyester or Kevlar have replaced cotton as the reinforcing fabric and it is the tyre’s one or two body plies that give it structural strength while making it flexible.

Externally, the car tyre’s sidewalls make it resistant to abrasion and chemical attack. Sidewall material includes antioxidants and antiozonants to help maintain strength and flexibility. This goes on in and behind the sidewalls on which you can see the tyre maker’s name and the various code digits that the confirm tyre’s size and rating.

The tyre beads lie at the edges of the sidewalls. They are bands of high tensile steel wire, coated with an alloy of copper or brass to prevent corrosion. The beads, inside their rubber casings, are strong points in tyres. They are what holds it firmly to the wheel and help seal in the air. The apex is the section that joins the bead and sidewall. Triangular in section, it is the cushion between the two.

Now for the belt package, the part that lies beneath the tread. This consists of a two rubber layers sandwiching a layer of steel cords. Here’s where ‘radial’ tyres gets their name; the cords run radially in the package. This steelwork gives the tyre the strength to resist dents from road impacts.

Like the sidewalls, the tread is a visible part of a car tyre. The tread compound is as important as the tread pattern. Tyres made of hard compounds wear well, while softer ones grip the road better. ‘Compromise’ is the watchword.

How are car tyres built? This process starts by wrapping the inner liner, body plies, sidewalls and beads around a special drum. The belt package and tread are then added. During this process, the components are ‘spliced’ together, before the ‘green’ (uncured) tyre is blown up and shaped. These tasks are generally automated.

Now comes the curing process. Though spliced, the various parts of the tyre have yet to be bonded together. This involves applying heat in a mould, to speed the chemical reactions between the different materials. During this stage, a rubber bladder, the equivalent of an inner tube, is used to force the tyre into the mould. Unlike an inner tube, the bladder is filled with steam, hot water or an inert gas. Tyre curing is done at very high pressure – about 350 psi – and at around 350 degrees farenheit. A passenger car tyre can be cured in around 15 minutes. Finally, the tyre is run on a mock road surface, to test for imbalance and local inflexibility. All tyres are visually inspected, some are even X-rayed.

So as this shows, there is more to a car tyre than meets the eye. It’s no wonder car tyres are tough enough for the tough job they have.

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As the cold and wet winter months approach now is a good time to check the condition of your car tyres. Car tyres are the only point of contact between your vehicle and the road. Any signs of wear or damage will decrease the performance of your tyres and endanger not only yourself but other road users too.

It is especially important to check your car tyres during winter as there is greater chance you will be driving in wet and icy conditions.

Based on the information provided by TyreSafe, three essential car tyre checks include:

1) Check the Tread Depth

Tread depth must be a minimum of 1.6mm. This is the legal minimum and applies to the entire circumference of the tyre.

Most tyres have a wear indicator built into the tread. Look for a horizontal bar of rubber located between the tread patterns, at a depth of 2mm. When the height of the tread wears down to the height of this bar it is time to replace your car tyres.

In the wet conditions that winter brings it is good advice to change your tyres well before they reach this limit. A tyre’s grip deteriorates more rapidly in the second half of its tread life and in the wet stopping distances is significantly increased.

If you notice unusual wear on your car tyre, such as excess wear on one edge, it may be a result of your wheels being incorrectly aligned. Consult your local garage or a tyre specialist to check your vehicle’s tracking.

2) Check Tyre Pressure

A car tyre that is inflated below its recommended pressure will wear faster because of its higher operating temperature and the extra flexing of the rubber. This causes deterioration of the tyre casing and rapid wear of the tread shoulders.

Over inflation can also increase wear due to the decreased size of the contact area between the car tyre and the road. This accelerates the wear in the centre of the tread, an area importantant for protecting the tyre against impact damage.

Driving with unequal pressures in your car tyres will lead to unusual and accelerated wear. It can be potentially dangerous as the balance of the car is upset and cornering with unevenly pressurised tyres can lead to unpredictable results.

3) Check Condition of Tyres

Remove any stones and other objects embedded in a car tyre’s tread. If you find a nail do not remove it as the tyre will rapidly deflate. Instead take the tyre to a specialist who may be able to repair the puncture.

Check for any unusual bulges or lumps as these are often a sign of internal damage.

Inspect the tread and sidewall rubber for sign of cracking. Crazing and cracking due to weather exposure usually becomes evident on car tyres that are more than five years old. However tyres on vehicles that are parked outside will degrade faster than those kept in a garage.

At the first sign of cracking change the tyre rather than risking a blowout when the vehicle is in motion.

Car tyres should be checked at least once a month. Regular inspection becomes more important the longer the tyre is in use. If any damage or unusual wear is found consult a car tyre specialist who will determine whether the tyre needs to be replaced.

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