Doris R. Asks: Do I Really Need To Replace All 4 Tires On My AWD Car?

Two different size tires

You might be asking yourself  “Why am I looking at two different shoes”? You are about to find out why. Doris had an unfortunate incident, she got a large nail in her tire. In most cases you can repair a tire with a patch,or plug but not in this case. The nail actually punctured the side wall of the tire and rendered it useless, and unfortunately the tire cannot be repaired safely in that area. She was told that, because her Honda CRV was an all wheel drive vehicle she would have to replace all four tires because they were 50% worn. She did replace all four tires, but thought about it and said to herself ” Did I just buy 4 new tires for nothing”?  Doris I want to set your mind at ease and let you know that you did make the right decision, here is why. As you can see the two tires pictured are drastically different in size, if they were rolled next to each other the smaller tire would be struggling to catch up to the bigger tire. On a vehicle with all wheel drive this usually always causes issues with the (AWD)  all wheel drive system. You see if there is a difference as little as one inch in the outside diameter of any given tire it can cause severe damage to the front or rear differential if one wheel is spinning faster than the other three wheels. So if you find yourself in this type of situation just make sure you save the remaining ‘GOOD” tires because you may be able to sell them to someone else in need of a couple of tires to get them by. So if you wonder why I have  two different type and height shoes displayed in this post is because I had a hard time explaining to Doris why the tires on her CRV needed to be the same size. So I put it to here this way: ” Doris try and wear two different size shoes for the day and see how your hips feel” I your car could talk what do you think it would say? That’s right “Help”!!!

Two different tires, two different shoes

Try walking around for a day with different shoes on. That will give you an idea how your car would feel with two different size tires on it.

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