Goodyear tyres Safety App-Available to All Motorists especially Young Drivers

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Goodyear tyres Safety App

Goodyear tyres Safety App; Goodyear tyres Safety App is mainly targeted at the younger driver. The young drivers are in my opinion the least likely to take onboard safety issues when it comes to safe driving. We have all been there in our younger days and done silly things. This, unfortunately, includes drink driving and more recently driving under the influence of drugs.

Tyre safety is a major issue to me. This simply because I feel it my responsibility to inform the public about tyre safety and the risks involved. Young men, in particular, seem to be the ones that flaunt the law. They overtake in silly situations. I have also noticed that recently this has become a more common problem.

This is when accidents happen? When a car is driven too fast out of a junction or at a roundabout can be a dangerous manoeuvre. But with a set of tyres that are not

Goodyear tyres Safety App

Goodyear tyres Safety App screenshot

correctly inflated can double the chances of things going drastically wrong.

This Goodyear tyres Safety App

This app is to inform young drivers about the dangers of distraction while car driving. Goodyear has used a 360-degree gaming App called, “driving academy” and partnered up with the Driving Instructors Association to show the dangers of driver distraction. This is most relevant when driving along and using your mobile phone at the wheel.

Young drivers account for many of the near misses, with 23% of you drivers, admitting that they have used a mobile phone when driving their car.

Kate Rock, the PR manager of Goodyear Tyre UK, says that “One in five young drivers have an accident in the first six months of passing their tests. In the tyre industry, you simply lose points if you get distracted, but transfer the scenarios to a real life driving environment and distractions can end up changing lives”.

It is the target to encourage all young drivers to study such an App to improve their driving skills and have more thought for other road users. Don’t forget the tyres?

Customers can get this app, which is available at drivingacademy.goodyear.co.uk and can be accessed using Google Cardboard – or without.

Electric Car Tyres-Why are they More expensive than your normal car tyres?

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Electric Car Tyres

Electric Car Tyres-We were enjoying a busy spell, the other day. There was nothing out of the ordinary, just regular cars in for regular jobs doing.

It was pointed out to me, though, that one of the cars was an electric car. It looked pretty normal, but it was indeed a Renault Zoe EV car. The guy had bought the car for his wife. She only drove local mileage. She was a school teacher and went to school and back, a bit of shopping and no more.

The main family driving was done in his petrol driven car. The car had a blowout and the tyre needed changing. The tyre was a 195/55R16 Michelin energy E-V tyre. The energy and wet grip ratings were a Double-A and the sound was 70 dB (decibels.).

Electric Car Tyres

Electric Car Tyres

To his surprise though the tyre cost him £120, considerably more that he expected? We explained that this tyre had been designed with rolling resistance in mind. Rolling resistance was one of the three considerations regarding a cause for energy loss. The cars aerodynamics and the engine are the two other considerations.

Electric Car Tyres

In my opinion, the best option would be the Hybrid. I just can’t see an infrastructure that would be big enough to charge up millions of cars at the same time?

Is the hybrid the best of both worlds? You can use the battery when driving about town and the petrol engine for longer mileage driving. This car would also give hope to millions of garages and mechanics who rely on the petrol and diesel engine cars for their living. At the moment, it is wealthy people who are buying these electric cars as a status symbol, the “look at me, how green am I” brigade. They mostly look like the type of guys who drive about in Jaguars.

Not all of them but most of them?

Overloading caravan tyres-will spell a great deal of danger for the whole unit

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Overloading caravan tyres

Overloading caravan tyres-Overloading caravan tyres are one of the cardinal sins?. The same also applies once again to motorhome drivers. This also comes into the poorly loaded vehicle category. You must ensure in any vehicle, but especially a caravan that the load is spread evenly.

What drivers do not realise is that a poorly distributed load will also overload the tyres. One side of the vehicle will be working harder than the other, which could lead to all sorts of problems as the journey progresses.

One of the worst places for this is on the M5 motorway. This motorway takes traffic to the holiday resorts in Devon and Cornwall. In busy periods the problems that drivers have with tyre blowouts magnifies. If the weather is hot, then the number of vehicles, (mostly caravans) increases and so does the number of tyres related problems.

The tyres that are carrying most of the weight, start to overheat and can eventually cause a blowout. This often relates to the caravan turning completely over.

Overloading caravan tyres

Overloading caravan tyres;This under inflated caravan tyre only lasted one week before it disintegrated on a journey .

Also, when a tyre builds up the heat it is more likely to pick up Sharpe objects, such as nails and screws and once again this may relate to a blowout.

I think it would be a great idea for Caravan manufacturers to fit run-flat tyres to their products. Or at least give the buyer the option of fitting them. I am sure that this would be a much safer option.

Overloading caravan tyres

To ensure that your tyres are not overloaded, it should be possible for you to keep your caravans operational weight underneath your caravan’s specified maximum limit. A margin of say 10% will partly help you to compensate for some unequal load distribution. For your maximum safety and peace of mind regarding your caravan vehicle weight, go to a Public Weighbridge to check the load, if this is possible of course?

In short always check your tyres are the correct load rating for your vehicle and check the pressures and general condition of your tyres before your journey, millions of drivers do this and arrive safely to their destinations, and do not go Overloading caravan tyres. If you are fitted with Extra-load tyres or van 6 ply rated tyres, then replace them with the same thing, do not cut corners and fit normal car tyres, this happens thousands of times and can end in disaster.

Motorhome Load Ratings

Caravan Tyres Ageing- Second –hand caravan owners should check their tyres before a journey.

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Caravan Tyres Ageing

Caravan Tyres Ageing

Caravan Tyres Ageing

This advice also stretches to people who buy second-hand motorhomes. When you buy your shiny caravan or motorhome. One of the first things to do before you set off from the dealers is to check your tyres.

The dealers will have made the vehicle look like it is sparkling.  Make sure the tyres will have been painted nice and shiny with special tyre paint. But in my opinion, you should take a closer at the tyres. Before you drive your new prize position off the dealers car park.

All tyres are made to give thousands of miles of good service. They should also be well looked after by the owner. And this is the problem? Unless you know who the last owner was, then you will not know if the tyre were well looked after or not.

I know that this is probably the last thing on your mind but take a good look at the tyres, to see if they have the correct specifications, for your vehicle. If it is bought from a dealer then you can ask them if the tyres are correct for your particular caravan or motorhome.

You would be surprised how many people come to a cropper with this. Because we are in close proximity to the M62 motorway, we get many flat and damaged tyres brought into us by the motoring organisations. A large part of these people tell us that they have, “just bought the caravan” and did not know that the thing was fitted with the wrong ply tyres.

Caravan Tyres Ageing

Some are fitted with car tyres and not with a higher load rating to carry the correct weight. The worse scenario is the tyres that have caravan tyres ageing. The best sign for this is cracking like crazy paving around the bead and tread area. A good check when purchasing your caravan will detect this cracking. It can be very dangerous and the cracks will only get worse and eventually result in tyre failure.

Eric Roberts

Here is a quote from the excellent tyresafe.org

“There is no known technical data that supports a specific age for a tyres removal from service. However, in the interests of safety a number of vehicle and tyre manufacturers recommend that tyres (including spares) that were manufactured more than a certain number of years previously be replaced with new tyres, even if they appear to be usable from their external appearance and the tread may not have reached the minimum legal limit. It is recommended that any such manufacturer instructions should be followed. The age of your tyres can be found by examining the DOT (or date of manufacture) code found on the tyres sidewall markings. To understand more about tyre sidewall markings and how to check the age of your tyres download our handy guide to Caravan tyre safety”

download our handy guide to Caravan tyre safety

Tyre Blowout-For unlucky Hull City football fan on his way to the playoffs? Hull Won

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Tyre Blowout

Tyre Blowout- Saturday morning working at Pellon Tyres here in Halifax Yorkshire, UK is always an interesting experience. We can get all sorts of people with different problems to solve on their beloved cars. Would this Saturday be no exception?

When we arrived first thing in the morning.We already had a customer waiting for our attention. The vehicle was Seat car. The driver was accompanied by an AA van.Who apparently had just towed the car in from the M62 motorway (about 5 miles from Halifax).

Because, his Seat had had a tyre blowout. Like so many of today’s cars, there was no spare wheel. The AA have told me on many occasions that many of their callouts

tyre blowout

Inside of the tyre showing tyre blowout damage.

are to stranded motorists without a spare wheel. Most of the drivers do not even know, that many car models come without a spare wheel.

Tyre Blowout

Because, many of these cars are on run-flat tyres. Some are not and only carry a tin of tyre sealant, as a temporary solution. The sealant is only good for the odd nail or screw. However, would not have been any good for the tyre blowout on this particular vehicle, which had suffered bad run-on damage to the tyre.

Consequently, as you can see in the image the tyre was way beyond any repairs and the Hull supporter had to buy a new tyre. The tyre was 215/55R16 and we fitted him with a new General mid-range tyre, made by Continental tyres.

The Hull city fan was more than happy with the price of the tyre and off he went on his journey to Derby, to watch the important playoff match. Incidentally, Hull went on to win 3-0 and the day recovered well, after the supporters bad start with his tyre experience. Finally Hull won.The Tigers were promoted to the English Premier League.

BMW Mini Wheel bearing-Our customer thought it was just tyre noise to start with?

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BMW Mini Wheel bearing

BMW Mini Wheel bearing-This was one of those customers that are not your customer if you get what I mean. Let me explain? The owner of this BMW Mini wheel bearing problem had taken the car with its noise problem to two other garages, before finally bringing his car into us.

The first garage put the problem down to the tyres. They were Mini run-flat tyres, 205/45R17 and these tyres were fitted to the original alloy wheels. I personally think that the early Minis were noisy to drive. I thought it was the run-flat tyres, due to the fact that they are very stiff and hard tyres. These tyres have

BMW Mini Wheel bearing

BMW Mini Wheel bearing -Dale one of our mechanics stripping down the wheel bearing

strengthened sidewalls and are a different tread compound to give them the extra strength, for if a puncture occurs and the tyres are then driven to safety at 50 MPH.

BMW Mini Wheel bearing

The guy paid them for an hours labour and then moved to the second garage. They told him more or less the same. The tyres are noisy due to construction and noisy roads. The guy was still not happy and so came to us for our advice.

Pellon Auto centre, Halifax, Yorkshire, UK, have a large number of customers that own BMW Minis. We have come across customers with noise complaints before. We did, however, check the tyres and the tyre pressures and they were fine. The next step was the wheel bearings. This has been a common problem for us in the past.

Just as we suspected one BMW Mini Wheel bearing was found to have a little play in it. It did not look to be much, but with the weight of the car and the wheel turning then the noise would have been replicated many times.

We told the relieved customer and carried out the work on the wheel bearings. The outcome was a much quieter BMW Mini and a happy customer.

Car Problems You’ll Regret Ignoring | Reader’s Digest

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From the dreaded “check engine” light to dangerously low tire pressure, here are the automotive issues you should deal with ASAP.

Source: Car Problems You’ll Regret Ignoring | Reader’s Digest

Kia Sportage Clutch problem-Customer had bought a second Sportage but the clutch was slipping?

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Kia Sportage Clutch problem

Kia Sportage Clutch problem-This is the sort of thing that we have seen before? A customer of ours has bought another second car and the first decent journey has ended up with some sort of problem. In the case of this Kia Sportage, the clutch started slipping.

The worse part about it was that after being the owner for 4 weeks, the guy took the Kia on a two week trip to France. This particular model was a 2.0 CRD

Kia Sportage Clutch problem

Kia Sportage Clutch problem-Showing old worn out clutch

injection and had clocked up twenty-three thousand miles.

Everything went well until he drove down the French AutoRoute (French Motorway) on his way to the South. The Kia Sportage Clutch Problem started. He felt

Kia Sportage Clutch problem

Kia Sportage Clutch problem, showing gearbox

the cars clutch slipping on some of the very steep inclines that are common on the French motorways. They build their motorways over the top of the hills, where we cut through the hills to make the inclines less steep.

Kia Sportage Clutch problem

The clutch did not slip all the time only when the car was overloaded and also when the guy had to accelerate quickly. Otherwise, the Kia performed well. The customer finished off his holiday, without any further problems and made it back to Halifax in Yorkshire.

After a few more weeks he noticed that the gears were getting more difficult to engage. Finally, it became almost impossible to get any gears and so he brought into us at Pellon Auto Centre, to try to solve the problem.

Ryan Lynton our service manager, checked the car over and had no hesitation in declaring that the clutch needed replacing. The guy left his Kia and the clutch was replaced by Alex.

The guy had bought the car privately and so had no real comeback for any compensation. It is just a chance you take when buying a car privately.

Locking Wheel-Nut Problem-BMW garage quotes extortionate price to remove locking wheel-nuts?

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Locking Wheel-Nut Problem

Locking Wheel-Nut Problem; It is easy see that the big main dealer garages, have much larger overheads than a small garage like my own, here at Pellon Auto-centre, in Halifax UK. Probably all of us small garage owners have heard horror stories from our customers about the charges that main dealer garages charge their customers.

We have heard of a couple recently? One was a lady customer who was charged £700 for a standard service on her Audi. The garage was, of course, an Audi garage, and she was threatened with the old story of, “if you have your car serviced elsewhere, it would cancel the cars warranty”

Locking Wheel-Nut Problem

315-35R20 Bridgestone Runflat BMW X5 tyre

We all know that this is not true. Going back to the lady customer, I asked if I could see the garages invoice because we all know that there could have been add-ons, such as other parts. This does sometimes put up the price of a service. But no the bill was for a service and service alone. I did notice that washing the car was extra, and a few other extras totted the bill up-to-the £700 that she paid.

The lady has been one of our customers ever since and all the rest of the family now bring their car problems into us. The most recent price shock came from the BMW garage. A tyre customer of ours asked the BMW garage to change his winter tyres back to his summer tyres. His car was in for some warranty work. He thought that he would ask them “just to change the tyres whilst they had the wheels off “, The BMW garage agreed but later in the morning phoned our customer with a locking wheel nut problem? The locking wheel nut tool was missing and they could not remove the locking wheel nuts.

The shock came when they explained that the job was going to be difficult and it would cost them a whopping £500 to remove the lockers and supply a new set? WOW

The terrified customer rang Deb our depot manager? Deb told her to get the car and we worked out that the job was going to be £54. The BMW came in and Ryan removed the lockers in 10 minutes, with no problem, like many other small garages we have invested in a special tool that helps us to remove the wheel nuts on 90% of vehicles.

Ryan also noticed that one of the summer tyres to be re-fitted had a nail in the shoulder area of the tyre. The Bridgestone tyres were special run-flat tyres that

Locking Wheel-Nut Problem

BMW X5 with locking wheel nut issues

were specific to this particular BMW X5 model. This BMW comes with the  i-Drive System. On this vehicle, the tyres must be of the same tread depth, on the same axle or this interferes with the cars drive system and handling.

The Bridgestone run-flat tyres are marked with a star on the sidewall. This star denotes that these are the correct tyres for this specific BMW car.

The customer paid a total of £640 for the Locking Wheel-Nut Problem solving and two new tyres fitting. There must be a moral in this story somewhere?

Tyre Price Match-Independent tyre companies like Pellon Tyres, can always Give a better deal?

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Tyre Price Match

Tyre Price Match-One of the things that have come out of the internet price war, is the ability to price-match. Tyre price match has become part of our weekly diet of working out the right price for our tyres to sell online.

Like many other independent tyre retailers in the UK, we always try our best to satisfy the service levels that we offer to our customers. Some of these customers, have been coming to us for years and trust us to give the best quality of work and service at a fair price.

We are always busy from word of mouth recommendations and we believe that this is still the best form of advertising. We do however offer our customers the

chance to look at our tyre website at www.pellontyres.co.uk and check out the price of their tyres. This is always helpful and the internet tyre market has now

Tyre Price Match

Tyre Price Match;Range rover for 4×225/55R20 Michelin tyres

grown to 20% of all tyre sales in the UK.

The only downside to this is the fact that, we are probably not the cheapest prices for every tyre that a customer wants to buy online. It is the same scenario for all the internet tyre stores. This also applies from the smallest to the largest. There are also some tyre products that you can buy on one website but not from another. If you want a general grabber for your 4×4 in the Halifax area, then we are the only place that you would be able to buy from in the Halifax area of the UK.

We always pride ourselves on being able to source a tyre for a customer. We have a supply chain that stretches all across Europe. To my knowledge, we have never failed to be able to match a tyre for one of our customers and this is a great benefit of dealing with a local tyre company. We are there to help you, the customer can see a great effort and the many contacts that we have with other tyre companies.

Our prices are very competitive, I fact the new buzz word is “Tyre Price Match”. We are finding that our loyal customers with knowledge about our excellent service will ask us to tyre price match. We are delighted to do this? We realise, that some of us are price driven and we are happy to help if possible.

In fact, our latest tyre price match came from a driver with a beautiful Range Rover SUV. His tyre size was 255/55R20 and he needed 4 tyres. Because of the price decided to look at different websites for a price. The price on our website was a little more expensive than another tyre company. He wanted to deal with us, Tyre Price Matchbecause of his past service and trust in our work standards. He rang deb in reception and asked for a tyre price match.

The tyres he wanted were top of the range Michelin Latitude Sports tyres and the most expensive. We shopped around our suppliers and to his surprise, we were able to beat his previous quotes. The customer was delighted and we fitted his tyres on a Saturday morning. If you like dealing with us we will gladly price match is possible, we are a small family business and as they say “every little helps”.