GREENSBORO, N.C. — It's that moment of dread when your car feels a bit it off balance. You pull over, open the door and hear the wheezing of air. Uh, oh -- a popped tire. You don't remember driving through a construction zone or running into the curb, so what caused this pain of a problem?
VERIFY QUESTION
On the heels of a VERIFY question last week about whether heat can crack windshields (it can't, unless there is an underlying issue), Good Morning Show viewer Renee Register asked:
"I had a blow out with a tire and was told it may have happened because of the heat on the roads. Is that true?"
VERIFY SOURCE
- Cynthia Roy - owner, auto technician of Roy's Automotive
VERIFY PROCESS
Cynthia Roy, owner and auto technician of Roy's Automotive, said the answer to Register's answer is no.
"Not heat by itself. As we talked the other day about windshields, there's always going to be an underlying factor in conjunction with the heat to cause a problem," Roy said.
The culprit? Over-inflation.
"Once the tire gets rolling down the road, it builds up heat in the surface, which causes the air to expand even further. [That] causes more pressure on the tire, which will cause a blowout, which is a sudden loss of air pressure from the tire," Roy explained.
The solution? Prevention with proper car care.
"Find the valve and take the cap off, and you take your (tire) gauge and push it down squarely and lift it up," she showed.
The magic number for tire pressure is 30 to 35 pounds, unless your car's owner's manual says otherwise.
If you have too much pressure, there is an easy fix -- flip around the tire gauge and press it against the valve to let out some air. Re-test it until it's the proper inflation level, and then put the cap on.
VERIFY CONCLUSION
Can heat on the roads cause a tire blowout?
"We will probably never reach those temperatures anywhere on earth," Roy concluded.
So, we'll deflate this fact as false, unless your tire just has too much hot air.
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