Monroe Auto Repair

How much do you remember about tire maintenance from your driver’s education class? I bet you don’t remember much. Most courses cover the rules of the road, not how to maintain a vehicle. As a new driver, there are many things to learn. Taking care of your car is one of those things. Let’s start with the one part of your vehicle that touches the road, your tires. That’s right, your tires are the only part of your vehicle that actually touch the road. That makes them an important safety feature, a factor in fuel economy, and a crucial part of your vehicle’s maintenance.  I want to make sure that you can take care of your tires and make them last!  Know how to check your tire pressure! Low tire pressure is the leading cause of tread damage, blowouts, and premature wear. To check your tire pressure all you need is a tire pressure gauge. Check your pressure by removing the cap from your valve stem and inserting the gauge. Most tires have a recommen ... read more

Head into the showroom at any tire retailer and you will find a dizzying array of tire types, sizes, tread patterns and other variables that can have you turning right back around and heading the other way.  The good news is a step-by-step approach to choosing the right tires for your car, truck or SUV with a little knowledge can make the process much simpler and give you great results. The type of tire you need depends on what kind of vehicle you have, your driving style and the type of weather you must cope with in your area. All Season Tires - Sometimes called Touring Tires, All Season Tires deliver good performance, handling and ride quality on dry, wet and moderately snowy roads. This is the most popular tire type and can be found on most four door sedans, wagons, small SUVs and sporty coupes.  Choose All Season Tires for the most well rounded on-road performance. Truck Tires - As the name suggests, these tires are typically found on trucks and large SUVs. Truck tires ... read more

Even just a pound or two of underinflation in your tires can be a problem. Why, though? There are several reasons. Fuel economy: If you ever rode a bicycle with a low tire, you know that it feels like you’re riding through wet cement due to the added rolling resistance. The same thing is happening with your car, and compromising your fuel economy. Over the course of 10,000 miles per year, that can add up to 150 gallons of gas or $500 out of your pocket!Handling: Low tire pressure means poorer control and longer stopping distances. At high speeds, in particular, this can be downright hazardous.Premature tire wear: Underinflated tires are under a lot of stress, especially their steel belts. Take a paper clip and work it back and forth until it snaps. Feel how hot it gets when the metal is stressed? The same thing happens with the steel belts in your tires, which are already heating up anyway due to normal wear. This heat and stress will cause uneven tread wear a ... read more

Ever wonder what the designations stamped on your tire sidewall actually mean? We’d like to break it down for you.Let’s take for instance, “P195/60R15 87S”. This is a full service description of a tire.In this case, “87S” denotes a tire’s load capacity and speed rating. The higher the number, the greater the load capacity – an 87 load capacity means that tire can support 1,201 pounds. Speed ratings range from L (75 mph) through V (149 mph), and an S speed rating means the tire is good for 112 mph. W, Y, and Z-speed rated tires are available for extreme performance cars and are rated as high as 186 mph.As for the rest of the information:--“P” denotes Passenger Tire--195 is the tire’s width from sidewall to sidewall... in millimeters--60 is the aspect ratio... the proportion of the height of the tire cross-section as compared to the width of the tread area--“R” stands for Radial construction--15 is the whe ... read more

Driving around on underinflated tires is just a bad idea all the way around. Underinflated tires increase a car’s rolling resistance, meaning a drop in fuel efficiency since it takes more energy to move the vehicle down the road.A single tire that’s down by ten pounds of air means a 3.3 percent drop in fuel economy…multiply that by all four tires, and you can figure on giving up ten percent of your gas mileage. The added friction and rolling resistance also means more heat is generated, and heat is the enemy of the internal structure of a tire. That heat will damage a tire to the point of failure. Studies show that underinflated tires are a full 25 percent more likely to fail, and at least half of one-car accidents involve a tire problem as a factor. And still, it’s estimated that 60 to 80 percent of the vehicles on the road are rolling on tires that are low on air.The tire pressure monitoring systems on newer cars are all well and good, but what can be done to ... read more