car owners maintain their car very well but often forget about tires. Tires are often looked as a problematic evil, filled with maintenance and issues like punctures, cuts, wobbles and fast wear. The drivers do not realize that all this problems are because of negligence and lack of maintenance. Failure of correct air pressure is one of the important reasons for short life of tires. Another important I thing to be taken care of is the wheel balancing or alignment. People often tend to forget the importance of tire and a little damage to it can lead to a bigger disaster. When ever there is a tire failure or replacement they often treat it as an expensive invitation that has to be taken care. But expensive when life is compared?
From the times of the 'mummified' tire of Dunlop, tires have traveled long way and also changed in big and better way. The most important factor in manufacturing the tires is its uniformity, but it was very difficult to give it a perfect round shape with proper and calculated dimension ensuring the perfect joints. We had to ensure that the joints were correctly placed. As the material used for the carcass was the newly invented rayon with nylon resulting in problems like casing break up or CBU. But today the technology is changed in a big way and no more such issues are faced by any manufacturers, as they have been eradicated and the new definition for uniformity stands in terms of material, production, and zero defects. The importance is given on safety, better traction and lower noise level.
How different is the newer technology from the older version of manufacturing tires, the material used is still rubber? That is common mistake people still make. Earlier the basic raw material used in tires was natural rubber but the modern car tires are not made with pure rubber. The 10% of the actual rubber is clubbed with 25-30 different materials and these materials are made up of hundreds of different chemicals to give a better air retention and zero resistance with safer tires.
Another progress that was noticed and played a vital role in the auto industry was the use of tires in the suspension system, coding the speed for tires like 'S' stood for standard speed (180kmph), 'H' for high speed (230kmph) and 'V' for very high speed (above 230kmph). And today we have variety of alphabets describing the speed codes and also the load index. So take good care of your car tires giving it a longer life.
