Central Coast tire tips as holiday travel season gets underway

Before loading up the car for that holiday trip this year, even if it’s an hour-long trip, be sure to check the air in your tire!

Tire shops across the Central Coast are busy tending to customers hoping to get a jump on holiday travel preparation by making sure their tires are ready for the road.

Temperature change in particular can impact tire pressure, in some cases tremendously.

It’s important to keep in mind some tire shops will offer to check and add air to your tire for free.

The treading itself is a different story, but an old test still used by some professionals can let you know whether your tire is good to go or not.

“The old penny test where you stick the head of the penny in the tread of the tire to see if you got enough tread,” says Mike Spencer with Tire & Wheel World. “Every tire does come with a wear-bar indicator. Either a TWI or ‘tread wear indicator.’ And there’s a little arrow on the sidewall. You want to look at the tire and see if you have enough tread above and beyond the tread wear indicator.”

Double-checking the tread of your tire is of utmost importance if you’re heading somewhere which is experiencing its first few days of rain.

“We still haven’t had a good rain yet and once that first rain comes it’ll be even more slippery than it normally is so when that first rain comes you gotta be extra careful,” says Spencer.

Spencer also says tires should be rotated every 6,000 miles or so to help with the wear and tear of a tire, considering much of its lifespan is spent pounding against often rough California roads.

Overloading your vehicle can also present dangers as well. A combination of heat and an overloaded tire can result in a complete failure of a tire.

Tire experts say most newer cars will have items in the trunk which can be helpful with either gauging tire pressure or simply replacing a bad tire with a spare should something go wrong on the road.