Maintaining proper tire pressure is important for fuel economy, tire wear, and safety. All cars old in the United States since 2007 come with tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) and when the warning light comes on, don’t ignore it. If a tire goes flat and you keep driving on it, you will damage the tire. Drive long enough, and it will shred to pieces.

As a tire is driven on while flat, the inside of the sidewall begins to deteriorate. A lot of times flat tires are filled with rubber dust because of this. When I took the flat tire off of this car, it wasn’t filled with what I expected.

The tire must’ve gotten very hot while it was driven flat, causing the rubber powder to melt back together. These chunks were completely solid, I couldn’t pull them apart. I’m surprised this happened, because I would expect the tire to shred before it got hot enough to melt the rubber back together.

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-Dan