While collecting my car from the workshop, I went and inspect my old car tires. It was a very scary experience because I was not aware how bad my tire condition was. Although I knew my tires were wearing out at the side to warrant changing, the inspection really open my eyes to the deteriorating condition of the tires.

Upon looking at my tires, I found out to my horror that there was a 4 inch nail pierce into the tires and the sidewall was already cracking up! Even though there was a long nail stuck in the tire, I didn’t experience any major loss of tire pressure. Perhaps the small circumference of the nail did not have a major impact to the leak. But the thought of a long nail inside the tire all this while gave me the shudders.

Not only that, the sidewall was deteriorating. It looks alright on the outside but on the inside, cracks could be seen inside the tire. Bending the sidewall, the mechanic could actually flake out some small rubber pieces! He explained that on a high speed, the tire will become very hot and the risk of tire puncture will be high.

That thought send me a chill, to think that I actually drove outstation on 3 hour journey down to Segamat, Johor and another 3 hours back again to Kuala Lumpur after my friend’s wedding was over in this kind of tire condition really shook me up. It was quite a risk but I have to thank God for journey mercies that no untoward incident happened on the highway. I didn’t drive very fast and mostly kept within and below the speed limit.

Despite the scare, I was pretty pleased that I could use my tires for two years clocking a distance of about 52,000km. Still safety must come first even if I were to stretch the usable life a little longer of any car parts. It may be penny wise pound foolish, but the pennies are quite a sum actually. Not cheap to change all the tires for the bill came to a tidy sum of RM$1520.

Well now I have new set of tires, I guess I’ll have a smoother drive for awhile anyway.