Linda Cate

Tire sealant may slow a tiny bead leak for a bit, but a rim leak usually needs the wheel cleaned, checked, and resealed. A tire that keeps losing air around the rim sends plenty of drivers straight to a bottle of sealant. That move makes sense when you just want the leak to stop and […]

A tire pressure warning usually clears after you set all four tires to placard pressure and complete the vehicle’s reset or relearn step. A tire pressure light can feel like a tiny problem that turns into a whole afternoon. You add air, start the car, and the warning still stares back at you. That usually

A 285/65R18 tire is about 32.6 inches tall, with a sidewall near 7.3 inches and a section width close to 11.2 inches. If you’re sizing up this tire for a truck or SUV, the plain answer is 32.58 inches, which rounds to 32.6 inches tall. That puts it right on the edge of the “33-inch

Maybe—deliberate tire punctures often form a pattern, while random road nails tend to be scattered and harder to predict. Finding a nail in one tire can feel like rotten luck. Finding nails again and again can make your stomach drop. The hard part is that both things can be true: road debris causes plenty of

A spare-wheel sensor reads air pressure inside the tire, sends that data by radio, and turns on a dash warning when pressure falls too low. A spare tire pressure sensor is usually the same kind of TPMS sensor used in the other wheels. It sits inside the wheel, often attached to the valve stem, and

Most tire sealant plugs a small tread puncture within minutes once the tire is aired up and rolled or driven briefly. If you’re trying to figure out how long tire slime takes to set, the plain answer is this: it usually starts sealing right away, and you’ll know a lot more after the tire has

Use a cold-tire gauge reading, match the driver-door sticker, then recalibrate the TPMS after you add or bleed air. A Volkswagen Taos makes tire checks pretty simple once you know where the right number lives. It is not on the tire sidewall. It is on the driver-door sticker and in the owner’s manual. Start there,

A 285/70R17 tire stands about 32.7 inches tall, with sidewalls about 7.9 inches high on each side. If you’re trying to figure out whether a 285/70R17 will fit your truck or SUV, the height is the number that usually settles it. This size lands right in the “about 33-inch tire” range, which is why it

No, a 17-inch tire will not seat, seal, or run on a 16-inch rim, so the wheel and tire diameter must match exactly. A lot of tire questions sound close enough to work. This one does not. The last number in a tire size marks the wheel diameter the tire was built for. A tire

Yes, a taller tire can make the dash show a lower speed and fewer miles than the vehicle is actually covering. If you’ve ever asked, “Do Bigger Tires Affect Speedometer?” after pricing out a beefier set of tires, the answer is yes. Your speedometer and odometer are calibrated around a stock tire size. Change the