Tyre Care 101: Pressure, Tread and Rotation

Four contact patches, each roughly the size of your palm, carry everything the car does — accelerating, braking, cornering. Tyres are the highest-leverage maintenance item on any vehicle, and the most neglected.

Check pressure monthly, when cold

Tyres lose roughly 1 PSI a month naturally, and more in cold weather. Always measure before driving, since even a few kilometres warms the air and inflates the reading. The correct figure is on the driver's door jamb — not on the tyre sidewall, which is the maximum, not the recommendation.

Read the tread

Every tyre has wear indicators moulded into the grooves. When the tread is flush with those bars, the tyre is legally and practically finished. Uneven wear tells you something else is wrong:

• Both edges worn — chronic under-inflation
• Centre worn — over-inflation
• One edge only — alignment needs attention
• Patchy or scalloped — worn suspension or unbalanced wheels

Rotate every 8,000-10,000 km

Front tyres wear faster on most cars — they steer and, on front-wheel drive, put the power down too. Rotating evens that out and meaningfully extends the life of the full set.

Age matters, not just tread

Rubber hardens over time regardless of use. Check the four-digit DOT code on the sidewall — "2224" means the 22nd week of 2024. Anything past five or six years is worth inspecting closely, even if the tread looks healthy.