I don’t know about you, but when I think about people making art out of old tires, I picture something like the penguin which sits in front of Mr. P’s tires in Milwaukee. So when I saw the photo of this gorgeous stallion made out of old rubber, I was blown away. Is this thing gorgeous or what? Check out some more examples of killer tire art over at Pretty Cool Things.

When a dry-rotted rear tire threw its tread while I was driving in my Eagle, I did exactly the wrong thing: I braked and hauled the car over to the shoulder in a hurry. I’d always been taught to get the car off the road asap if such a crisis occurred, and when I heard that shotgun-blast of the tire letting go, my emergency autopilot took over. I didn’t wreck, but it turns out the brake-and-swerve technique is the single fastest way to lose control of your vehicle during a tire blowout or tread separation. Hitting the brake when you have a flat or rapidly deflating tire unbalances the vehicle violently and can easily throw you into a spin. According to police trainers, what you’re actually supposed to do is momentarily squeeze the gas pedal slightly, keep a firm hold on the wheel, and steer straight in your lane. This stabilizes your ride (the drag from the damaged tire will keep you from speeding up) and allows you to then coast (not brake) down to below 30 mph, at which point you can then very lightly apply the brakes and gradually pull off the road. Check out full road-emergency-survival details at Edmunds—the demo video they’re running, in which trainers simulate front and rear blowouts using explosive charges, is pretty wild!—and get more insight into blowout dynamics in this article from The Car Connection.

When it’s time for new tires I usually start out by doing some research on Tire Rack. I get down to two or three options and then take them over to my favorite forum for more feedback. Once I’ve made my final selection, I call around to my local tire dealers and check on price and availablity. If no one can beat or match Tire Rack I go ahead and order from them. When I bought new BF Goodrich Radial T/As for my Mopar last year, I wasn’t sure if I could squeeze 255/60/15s in back or not, but Discount Tire was willing to order 245s as well and do a test fit. 255s fit just fine, so I was a happy camper. I’ve also had very good luck with Les Schwab–when I ordered new Michelins for my Volvo from Tire Rack, Les Schwab mounted them for me. 

A note on the photo below. I wasn’t super thrilled with the photos of the tires on my Satellite, but I really loved the look of these Hoosiers and retro Keystones on the ’69 Barracuda at the Mopars Unlimited Spring Roundup last year.

So how and where do you buy tires?

When you’re heating up the rubber before a sprint down the 1/4 mile, burnouts serve a practical purpose.  But as we all know, most of the time, they’re just for done for fun—and that’s great. I mean, what isn’t fun about making a ton of smoke and noise?  As you can imagine, everyone here at CarDomain is staunch supporter of gratuitous burnouts, so much so that we have a video category specifically dedicated to them. That said, this clip of a little Starlet roasting off the rubber features the best smoke session I’ve seen in a long, long time. That dude sure is going for it! What’s the coolest burnout you’ve seen lately?

Automakers are scrambling to improve the gas mileage ratings of their vehicles. What’s a cheap and easy way to do that? Switch to low-resistance tires, which, until recently, were mostly found on hybrids. Ford is switching all of their compact SUVs to low-resistance tires for 2009. The Ford Escape will be getting Michelin Latitude Tour tires, which will improve the Escape’s gas mileage by 1 mpg. At current gas prices this will save the new Escape owner roughly $300 over the lifetime of the tires. However, low-resistance tires are more expensive to replace than conventional tires. And there are other trade-offs besides price: stopping distances will be a few feet longer, plus these tires don’t really work off road too well, which seems kind of silly for a tire that comes standard on a SUV. Source: Detroit News.

I’m sure a lot of you remember the Firestone/Ford fiasco back in 2000, which resulted in 6.5 million Wilderness A/T and ATX II tires being recalled following a disproportionate number of tread separations, leading to rollover wrecks in the flip-prone Explorer SUV. You might say that both brands were tainted by this ordeal, and that’d  probably be an understatement. But going on the theory that Jack In The Box is the safest place in the world to eat only after an e. coli outbreak, don’t you think Firestone would’ve way over-engineered its product following the disaster, as insurance against it ever happening again? Once bitten, right? I’m just wondering, because I’ve been shopping for new tires for my Eagle and have noticed that the ratings on Firestones generally tend to be pretty high. The user ratings for the Firestone Destination A/T’s I’m considering over at The Tire Rack are off the charts—you don’t generally see so many fields rated dark green (superior). It kind of leads me to believe that a little recall—or in Firestone’s case, a massive, precedent-setting recall—can be a good thing. How about you? Are you wary of manufacturers tainted by past recalls? Or do you figure their product must be safer than ever?

My last tire-related post was basically a rant about how much I hate mini-spares, and I had a blast writing it. Of course, I was happy to see that several people who left comments agreed with me, but I was more  intrigued by the multiple mentions of run-flats. Now, in my head, run-flat tires are still these James Bond super tires that resist spike strips and let you drive on the ceiling, but in reading about them, I’ve come to discover that’s not the case. Given their limited range—50 to 100 miles—and limited life span—often half that of conventional tires—I’m not sure I would opt for them on a new vehicle. But that’s just me. What do you think? Is this new-fangled rubber worth the extra dough?

I did, and it wasn’t fun. I had my little sister in the car, I was doing about 70 on the PA turnpike and pulling out to pass a semi, my Eagle was rolling on the junk tires it had on it when I bought it out of a field for 500 bucks. When the left rear let go, it felt like the whole back end was suddenly on rollerskates. Fortunately, my mad driving skills and people’s instinctive tendency to get out of the Eagle’s way averted major catastrophe. But I sure wouldn’t want that to happen again, and I sure learned my lesson about being a dumbass about my tires. Continued…

Continue reading "Have You Ever Suffered A Blowout?" »

Do you even know? Do you want to know? Well, there’s a little code on your tire’s sidewall that will tell you when it was manufactured. The tire below was manufactured on the 46th week of 1996, but was being sold as new in a Sears store, even though some experts say that tires over six years old should not be put into service–you can read the whole alarmist ABC "expose" here. I know that a bunch of muscle car and rat rod guys enjoy running around on ancient bias plias, which, needless to say, is not recommended…

Flat tires suck, obviously. But you know what sucks even worse? Donut spares! I know, they’re supposed to save space, and carrying around a little less weight might—very slightly—improve your mileage. But neither of those factors can overcome the fatal flaw with these idiotic inventions. So what’s the rub? Well, just think about it. Let’s say you’re coming home from school, or moving, and you have your car packed to the gills. Then you get a flat. Now, aside from the obvious inconvenience of having to unload the trunk to get to your spare, after you’ve slapped on the donut, you now have another question to answer; Where exactly are you supposed to put your full-size flat? It sure won’t fit in the space designated for the "special" tire, so now, you have to figure out where to stow it. And since tires ride along roads, which are often wet, muddy and grimy, you’re going to have to put a huge dirty thing which is supposed to stay outside next stuff you’ve already determined should be protected from the elements. And that blows! This happened to me once on my way home from college, and I’m still pissed about it. These tires are so lame, I haven’t even been able to enjoy a Krispy Kreme since that happened. It might not be fair, but it’s true.