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Tire Rotation Guide - Recommended Every 6000KMs |
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Written by Abhinav Sharma
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Wednesday, 01 September 2010 15:55 |
I had been thinking of writing on the Tire Rotation process. It has been raining for a month now and the roads are a mess. Everyone who has driven in Pune recently knows that. I was unfortunate enough to drive in Bombay last weekend and I can safely say Pune roads are still in better condition than Bombays. On such broken roads is where tire care becomes more important than you can imagine. Tire rotation is basically moving the tires from one position to another in the car to ensure even tire wear across all four of them.
Many of you may not know this but every tire wears out differently. Many reasons exist for this, I will discuss some here. Most of the vehicles in our market are front wheel drive type. That means the vehicle is powered by the front wheels and the rears ones are just dragged along. The engine is in the front and so is the differential. That makes the car a lot heavier in the front than at the back. This makes the front wheels prone to quicker wear which might seem strange to the untrained eye but this is quiet normal. In fact the difference can be so much that the front wheels wear out twice as fast as the rear ones. This needs to be countered otherwise you will end up replacing your front tires numerous times before the rear tires need a change. Here the front tires are loosers.
Now in our right hand drive country, the left turns are always tighter than the right ones. Notice this when you make a turn towards left and compare it to a similar turn towards the right. When turning tighter towards the left, the left tire also leans a bit on the left, much more than the right tire does. This is more for drivers control on the vehicle and better grip levels. All this results in the left side tires wearing out much faster than the right side ones. And the front tire much more than the rear. You can see it yourself by sliding in a coin into the tire ridges and checking their depth using your thumb. The left side tires loose here.
Also, if your car is pulling on one side, you manually correct this by rotating the steering wheel which is easy and not noticable in traffic. But actually one of the tires is dragging along with the vehicle and other three. In effect the vehicle is constantly turning, causing uneven tire wear. You need to get the wheel alignment/balancing done at the earliest.
Mechanical problems can also result in uneven tire wear. The problems with suspension and swing arms can force the tire to rest improperly on the road surface forcing it to wear unevenly as the car moves. All these listed problems are critical since tires are expensive to replace and most of us want to only buy tires in a set of 4 instead of repeatedly buying tires after one of them gets spoilt. Tire rotation system is listed in the diagram here. It is different for Unidirectional tires which can rotate only in a single direction, you cannot put them on the other side of the car unless they are unmounted and fitted again to the wheel rim.  Another culprit that results in uneven wear is the incorrect air pressure. Patterns are different for over and under inflated tires. Over inflated tires will wear more from the center of the contact patch and under inflated tires ones will wear out more from the outer sides of the contact patch. Both should be avoided. The first one will damage the suspension and the latter one will do the same to the engine and fuel economy. Tires should be rotated everytime we do an alignment/balancing setup. That is about 6000-8000 kms on our roads and longer by international standards. The idea is to keep rotating the tires and have even tire wear on all of them so they have similar grip levels at all times. |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 01 September 2010 16:28 |
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VW Vento Prices - On Road Pune |
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Written by Abhinav Sharma
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Tuesday, 24 August 2010 23:44 |
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Vento is now in the market and is priced aggressively bang on the Honda City. So much that you can have one with the 1.6 Diesel (that belts out immense 25KgM of torque) for lesser than the Honda bread and butter. Click here or the picture for details. 
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 01 September 2010 16:14 |
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Nissan Begins Micra Production, Expect 4Lac Pricing |
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Written by Abhinav Sharma
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Tuesday, 25 May 2010 23:17 |
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Nissan begins production of the Micra compact in India and is expected to produce 80,000units per annum. At least that is what they say. That is a tall promise for a company which is still unknown in our country and sells the X-Trail and the Teana at the top end of the market. The only way Indians know about Nissan is through the Army Jonga which was the Nissan Patrol of that era. Well, the story is quite different now. Bookings have already begun but where to buy it from, I don't know. There is nothing remotely Nissan near any of us since almost ever. Nissan's Micra plan starts in India and the next market for introduction of this little car will be Europe sometime in October. 80,000 cars a year translates to about 6500+ cars a month. That's almost as much as the Figo and half of what Swift is doing and about 10 times of what Punto does in a month. All brands I named are household names in our country, FIAT a bit unlucky out of the three. The number is not possible unless it is backed by tremendous advertising and unbelievable pricing. VW did the advertising like no other and sells just 700 Polo's a month because it's clearly expensive for what it offers. Figo is a price warrior and people still don't believe the prices. Even after seeing the prices, I have seen them asking, must be the Delhi price, or the Delhi ex-showroom price or some place else. The prices are just too good to be true in the literal sense. Nissan will have to pull something like that off. Getting it right is difficult in India because we are a sensitive group of buyers and not many know the connections between them and Renault. If they knew, no one will look at the Micra, the way the Logan belongs to Mahindra now and has been completely ditched by the parent company Renault. As I said, Indian car buyer is sensitive. See the detailed pictures here.
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Last Updated on Monday, 02 August 2010 13:31 |
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Stuff About Tires, Enough To Get You Started |
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Written by Abhinav Sharma
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Monday, 02 August 2010 13:27 |
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What is with the Indian Car Market? It is just too price sensitive. It is not that you get inferior stuff every time you buy something inexpensive, it is mostly that you do. And this translates into cheaper components and fittings on our every day cars that you and I drive. I am going to be talking about tires today and how they affect everything about your car, also how the market conditions and road conditions dictate the size of your car tires and your overall comfort when you are behind the wheel.
Tires have numbers, you must have seen on the sidewalls. They are also rated based on alphabets and a few more codes and numbers to show what the tire is capable of. There are different tires for various applications and based on the tread pattern, you can pretty much say what it is made to do. The off-road tires have got deeper tread to give traction in all directions possible. They have deeper grooves and probably square patterns on the surface, the more divisions, the better to maximize grip levels. They are mostly available in higher 'profiles' which I will come to later in this write up. Read the rest of the entry in the forum
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 24 August 2010 23:51 |
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VW Releases Polo Sedan Sketches, Will Call it the Vento |
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Written by Abhinav Sharma
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Tuesday, 18 May 2010 19:56 |
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Okay this will probably be called Vento. Vento was a VW sedan in the late 80's in Europe. They will probably give this name to the new Polo derived sedan. The sketch below has just been released by VW and as usual, all cars look amazing, muscular, smart, butch and powerful because its a sketch. The story is very different when it lands in the showroom with skinny high profile tires which are good for nothing but pot-holed roads and dirt. Sketches are just amazing things to think and just dream about how awesome this car would be. Well enough of that. I also have a picture that Autocar India has made. They always do and they are damn accurate. I remember they made the 3rd generation City so perfect that you couldn't have imagined it was a PS job after looking at camouflaged Honda City's on the road. They did the same for the Indigo Manza and here they are again. This sedan is coming to us in July (right, just 2 months from now) and will be manufactured in the Chakan Plant of VW group that also manufactures the Polo and the Fabia. Two engine options. 1.6L Diesel and a 1.6L Petrol. Both 100BHP engines but the diesel has tremendous pulling power thanks to it's 25Kgm of torque compared to the Petrol's just 15. Yeah and the pricing is bang on Ford Fiesta. 7-9 Lacs and you get this VW home. Only one thing missing, most of the people still don't know where to buy one from. Think about it. 
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 25 May 2010 23:34 |
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