Why are my tires turning brown? Protective ingredients in the rubber can work their way to the surface, leaving a brownish film known as blooming. Road dirt and brake dust can look similar. Blooming i
Tire valve caps have a talent for disappearing. One drops beside the air pump, another vanishes during a tire change, and the next set you find online looks far nicer than the little plastic ones the
A new car is allowed a few small imperfections. The protective plastic may still be clinging to the touchscreen. The tires may feel slightly noisy before they settle in. The cabin may smell like an in
The car drifts gently toward the shoulder, and suspicion immediately falls on the alignment. That is understandable. A car should travel where it is pointed, and anything that seems to tug at the s
The tires were set perfectly that morning. Then, after a long stretch of highway, the pressure display shows every one of them sitting several pounds higher. Out comes the gauge. Sure enough, the d
The tire-pressure warning light is not one of the dashboard’s more mysterious creations. It looks like a sagging tire with an exclamation mark inside, which is a fairly direct way of saying, &ld
The sticker inside the driver’s door says 35 PSI. After an hour on the highway, the dashboard says 39. Four extra pounds of pressure sounds like a problem. The tires were set correctly that morn
Set the cruise control to 70 mph and glance at the navigation screen. It may insist the car is traveling at 67. Increase the cruise setting to 71. GPS grudgingly moves to 68. The two displays can sp
A tire can look almost offensively healthy for its age. The tread grooves are deep. There are no nails in sight. The sidewalls still turn glossy after a wash, and the car has covered so few miles th
Here is a mildly alarming experiment: open the trunk of your car and lift the floor. There may be a spare tire under there. There may also be a little black compressor, a bottle of sealant, and a