Choosing A Car You Will Love

Four Reasons That Your Tires Are Cooler Than You Think

20 May 2019

Louis Castro

When it comes to routine car maintenance, tire replacements are not cheap. Depending on your wheel size and the type of tires that you choose, replacing all four can easily cost upwards of $800 or even more. This can seem excessive, but your tires are a key factor in your car's performance and safety. Remember that your tires are the only part (hopefully!) of your vehicle that actually makes contact with the road surface. Without good tires, your engine is powerless to put all that horsepower to good use and your brakes are helpless to stop you in an emergency. Of course, you already knew all of that, but you may not know these four interesting facts about modern tires.

Tires Aren't Just Rubber

The phrase may be "burning rubber," but a whole lot more goes into a modern tire. The tires in your car are made up of a huge number of compounds, and their exact composition varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and from tire type to tire type. The formulation of these compounds is in part what determines how grippy a tire feels as well as its long-term wear characteristics. Not only that, but these formulations help manufacturers to design tires that are particularly well suited to certain climates. This is why riding on winter tires in the summer is such a bad idea and, along with tread pattern types, part of why summer tires perform so poorly in winter.

Tires Used to Be Solid

Modern tires used on consumer vehicles are properly described as pneumatic tires, which means that they are filled with air. Tires weren't always designed this way, however, and early tires were completely solid. Of course, there were good reasons for switching to pneumatic designs. Air-filled tires are great at absorbing the inconsistencies found both on- and off-road, allowing vehicles to soak up bumps, potholes, and other issues with less-than-perfect driving surfaces. It can be frustrating when your tire springs a leak, but pneumatic tires are used on modern vehicles for good reason.

Black Tires Are Stronger

Think all tires are black? Think again. In most cases, the rubber compounds used to make tires are naturally white or light gray. The black color that is commonly associated with tires comes from a material called carbon black. This is an additive used by essentially all tire manufacturers which increases the strength of the rubber compound. Without it, your car's tires likely would not be strong enough to stand up to the amount of punishment they take from day to day.

Tires Get HOT!

As if dealing with beaten and pockmarked city streets wasn't enough, tires also have to put up with some pretty extreme heat. Even if you aren't taking your car to track days, your tires still take a lot of heat. On a normal day of driving, the tires on your cars may heat up to almost 60 degrees above the ambient temperature. If you are driving on the highway for extended periods of time or forced to do a lot of cornering or emergency braking, those temperatures may climb even higher. On a very hot day, this means that your tires may reach temperatures of 150 to 160 degrees or more.

While many people are focused on the design of a car or what's under its hood, tires are just as important. Not only that, but modern tires are marvels of engineering that are carefully designed to safely carry you wherever you need to go.

To learn more, reach out to a supplier that offers car tire sales.

Share

Search