A tyre with an expensive rim. - FILE
A CORNY CHINESE philosopher's joke goes 'man who run in front of cart get tired. Man who run behind car get exhausted'.
While that may be true for those who find themselves on the wrong side of a motor vehicle, the unnamed philosopher may have well added one to his or her set of 'tired' sayings; 'person who don't pay attention to tyres get deflated'.
Many people pay attention to their tyres only when they go soft, have a puncture or get so run down that if the proverbial mosquito settles and stings it will go pop, very loudly.
However, there is more than air and rubber to a tyre, and as the miles tick away on the odometer, many have left the little dollars that add up to big dollars through what is, hopefully, the vehicles only contact with the road.
Paul, a mechanic with decades of experience, has a simple motor car philosophy which he applies from batteries to tyres. "The manufacturer put everything on the car for a purpose. Unless is a definite fault, is the best fit for that car. I don't say that things cannot improve, but you find that when you improve one thing, you have to change the other. If you put in a bigger engine, you going to need a better exhaust system and better brakes," he said.
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"With the tyre now, if you change tyre size there is not much else you can change on the car, so you find that you going to lose efficiency. Most people don't go smaller; is a rims thing people go for, with the look, and you find that they have to spend more money on gas," he said.
It is not only a larger tyre that costs more at the pump. Rohan, an attendant at a Corporate Area service station, said that he was taught about tyre pressure, so he knows that without the required air in a tyre, it takes more gas to move the vehicle around.
"It make sense, cause the car heavier pon de ground, so it mus' tek more fe move it," Rohan said.
Then there is the matter of what it takes to change the tyre size in the first place. About 10 years ago, when the then 42-year-old Garfield bought a Chevrolet Silverado, his friends encouraged him to 'hoist it up' with larger tyres. He eventually did, after the ones that he had on the van had worn down. And that took a year.
His son Brian, who is now 25, has no such patience. He forked out $38,000 for a set of rims and tyres for his Honda and thinks that he got a deal for the used set of 'shoes'.
"Yeah, Daddy tell me that it is a waste, but the car just doesn't look right with the small tyres," he said. However, he recovered some of the money by selling the set that he took off. As for gas, he has been told that he will be spending more, but thinks that it is worth it.
"The car has to look really good and the rims are like the first thing you see," he said.
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