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Tires
Track tires per wheel position, log tread and pressure readings over time, and let MyGarage warn you before a tire gets dangerously low.
Find it on the vehicle detail page, under Maintenance → Tires. Trailers, fifth wheels and travel trailers have no Tires tab.
A tire is a thing you own, and a position is somewhere it currently sits. Those are separate facts, which is what changed in v3.3.0. Before, a tire was its position, so a set of winters you owned but had not fitted could not be recorded at all, and a rotation looked like four tires being edited.
A vehicle has five corners: FL, FR, RL, RR and SPARE. A tire can be mounted at one of them, or sit in storage with no position at all. Every time a tire goes on or comes off, MyGarage records a mount period, so a tire's distance is the sum of the distance driven while it was actually on the vehicle (or the hours run, on an hours vehicle). Readings build a history you can open from the tire card, and they let MyGarage project when the tire will reach its wear limit.
- Open the vehicle, go to Tires
- Click Add Tire
- Fill in what you know:
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Brand, Model, Size (e.g.
265/70R17) - DOT - the date code from the sidewall
- Tread - the tread depth, in your own tread unit, millimetres or thirty-seconds of an inch
- Pressure - in your own pressure unit, PSI, kPa or bar
-
Min Tread - the depth that counts as worn out,
2.0mm by default, shown in your own unit - Mounted, the date the tire went on, which defaults to today, and Odometer, in the vehicle's odometer unit (or the hour meter, on an hours vehicle). Beneath it MyGarage offers the vehicle's reading nearest to the date you chose, with its own date, and Use fills it in. Both appear only when you pick a corner; a tire going straight to storage has no mount to date.
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Brand, Model, Size (e.g.
- Either mount it at a corner, or leave it In storage
A tire going to storage can carry a Storage location, free text such as "garage shelf B". It can also be set when editing the tire or when dismounting it.
Nothing is required beyond the tire itself. A tire added without a position goes to the In storage group, which is how you record a set you own but have not fitted.
Every operation that moves a tire, Mount, Dismount, Retire, Rotate and fitting a set, asks for a date and an odometer (or the hour meter, on an hours vehicle), with the same nearest-reading suggestion. The date defaults to today; change it when you are logging something you did last weekend. Without the odometer the tire's distance cannot be worked out, and the card says so rather than guessing.
The odometer is also saved to the vehicle's odometer history as the tire's own entry. It never changes an entry made by you, a service visit, a fuel-up or LiveLink, and it adds nothing on a day that already has a reading at least as high.
Add and Edit are separate actions, so opening a tire to check it will never overwrite what you already entered.
- Mount puts a stored tire on an empty corner and opens a mount period. Dismount the tire already on a corner before mounting another there.
- Dismount takes it off. The tire keeps every reading and its history; it simply has no position.
- Rotate moves all four in one action. Pick a pattern: Forward cross (front-wheel drive), Rearward cross (rear- and four-wheel drive), X-pattern, or Front to back, which is what directional tires need.
- Retire is what replacing a worn tire means. The tire comes off for good and keeps every reading and mount period. Delete, in the edit drawer, destroys that history instead, and is meant for a tire entered by mistake.
- Restore, on a retired tire, puts it back in storage with its history. Retired tires are hidden until you turn on Show retired.
- A mount date earlier than a period the tire has already finished is refused, because it would say the tire was on the vehicle twice at once. Correct an existing period in the tire's mount history instead. To record a period you never logged at the time, use Add past period in the tire's history.
- A retire date earlier than the last date in the tire's mount history is refused, and the message names that date. Retire on that day or later, or correct the period first.
- A period can't run past the day its tire was retired. Add past period refuses one, and so does Edit on a period when you change one of its dates; an edit that leaves the dates alone isn't checked against the retirement.
An ATV, a side-by-side or a tractor set to track engine hours and not distance (see Engine Hours Tracking) has no odometer, so its tires run on the hour meter. This page calls that an hours vehicle. Wherever a tire dialog would ask for an odometer it asks for Engine Hours instead, and the nearest-reading suggestion offers the vehicle's hour readings. The card shows Hours on tire in place of Distance on tire, the Wear Estimate projects the hours left, and the tire section of the Analytics page reads in hours too.
The hour meter is saved to the vehicle's engine hours history as the tire's own entry, under the same rules as the odometer above, and the Engine Hours tab lists it as Tire.
A vehicle that tracks both gets both fields in every tire dialog. Neither is required, but its tire figures run on the odometer, since tread wears with distance rolled and an hour meter also counts idling. The tire's history shows both readings.
Turning distance tracking off moves a tire's figures to hours, and turning it back on moves them back. A period recorded with only the other reading can't count toward the figures, so the tire's history says when some periods only have the other reading; Edit on a period adds it.
Before tires had an hours field, an hour meter typed into a tire's odometer was saved as an odometer. Those figures stay in the vehicle's odometer history, and on the tire's mount periods and readings, where they count as odometers again if distance tracking is turned on. Turn it on to see them, then delete them on the Odometer tab, clear them with Edit on the period, and delete any reading that carries one.
Name a group, such as "Winter studded", and fit the whole group in one action. Each tire goes back to the corner it was last on, and anything in the way comes off. Deleting a set keeps the tires, it only ungroups them.
The tire card shows Distance on tire (Hours on tire, on an hours vehicle), summed over the tire's mount periods rather than taken from the odometer span. That matters if you run two sets: the old calculation counted the distance driven on the other set as well.
When it cannot work the figure out, the card says which reading is missing rather than showing a wrong number or a blank:
- Not yet known: add an odometer to this tire's mount - the mount has no opening odometer
- Not yet known: add the hour meter to this tire's mount - the same, on an hours vehicle
- Not recorded yet - the tire has no mount periods
- Spare, never rolled - exactly what it says
When a period is missing a number, or contradicts the rest of the history, the card shows a Fix button. It opens the tire's history, where the period that needs attention carries a badge.
A reading is a dated tread measurement, kept as history rather than replacing the last one.
- On the tire, choose Log Reading
- Enter the date, then a tread depth, a pressure, or both. The odometer (or the hour meter, on an hours vehicle) is optional.
A reading needs at least one measurement, but it does not matter which. If you are watching a slow leak and own no tread gauge, log the pressure on its own; a reading with no tread leaves the tire's recorded tread alone rather than erasing it.
Tread and pressure are entered in your own units, and the odometer in the vehicle's odometer unit. See Units for how to set them. In 32nds of an inch, a digital gauge's reading in inches works too: type 0.346 and it becomes 11/32 when you leave the field, rounded to the nearest 32nd.
Backdated readings are safe: entering a reading from three months ago will not overwrite a newer measurement of the same thing.
A reading entered wrongly is fixed with Edit in the tire's history: change the date, tread, pressure, odometer (or hour meter, on an hours vehicle) or notes and save. An odometer can be added to a reading logged without one. When the fixed reading is the newest, the tire's tread and pressure follow it; moved to an earlier date, they go back to the reading that's now newest. A tread or pressure you set on the tire yourself stays, unless the reading you fix is now the newest with that measurement and you changed that measurement or the date; fixing only the notes or the odometer leaves it alone. Delete removes a reading that shouldn't be there at all; deleting the tire's newest reading sets its tread and pressure back to the most recent earlier reading that measured them, or clears them if none did, unless you have changed that value on the tire since. A reading with a wrong odometer or date can also stop a mount, dismount, retire, rotation, set fit or mount history edit of that tire: the message names the reading by its date and odometer (or the hour meter, on an hours vehicle), so you know which one to fix. An edit that would make the reading contradict the tire's mount history is refused the same way.
Click a tire card to open its history. Mount history comes first: when the tire was first installed, then every period it spent on a corner, oldest first, each with its mount and dismount date and odometer (or the hour meter, on an hours vehicle). A period the app had to assume at upgrade time carries an Assumed badge; one that blocks a figure carries Needs an odometer (Needs the hour meter, on an hours vehicle) or Check this period. Edit on a period lets you correct its dates, odometers (or hour meter readings, on an hours vehicle) and notes. The open period is closed with Dismount, not here, and a closed period is never reopened; mount the tire again instead. Correcting a period recorded before 3.4.0 leaves its old vehicle odometer record in place; delete that on the Odometer tab if it was wrong. A period that contradicts another period or a reading carries Check this period on both sides, with the reason beneath it. Add past period records a period you never logged at the time: pick the corner, the dates it went on and came off, and the odometers (or hour meter readings, on an hours vehicle) if you know them. It is checked against the rest of the history and never changes where the tire is now. Readings follow, newest first, each with Edit and Delete.
Once a tire has two readings that each carry both a tread depth and an odometer, MyGarage works out the wear rate and estimates:
- how much distance is left before the tire reaches its minimum tread
- roughly when that will happen
On an hours vehicle all of this runs on the hour meter instead: the readings need the hour meter, the estimate is the hours left, and the rest of this section reads the same with the hour meter in place of the odometer and hours in place of distance.
One reading is not enough, because there is no rate to measure yet. Neither are two readings with no odometer on them: the projection is distance-based, so without an odometer on both there is nothing to measure the wear against. Until it can project, Wear Estimate says what is missing, such as Needs a second tread reading or Add an odometer to the tread readings.
Since v3.3.1 the wear rate is measured against the distance actually driven on that tire between those two readings, using its mount periods, rather than the vehicle's whole odometer span between them. If you run two sets, the earlier calculation counted the distance driven on the other set as well and over-stated how much life was left. v3.3.0 announced this change but did not complete it, so v3.3.1 is the release where it takes effect.
Because of that, a Wear Estimate you have seen before can drop sharply after upgrading, and a seasonal set is where it drops most. Nothing about the tire changed; the earlier figure was measured over too much distance.
When the mount history cannot support an honest figure, the estimate is withheld rather than published as a confident number. That happens when a mount period covering the interval is missing an odometer bound, when two periods claim the same kilometres (a tire cannot be in two places), when the dates and odometers describe different histories (which is what an odometer reset looks like), or when a period runs backwards. Supplying the missing odometer, or correcting the wrong one, fills the estimate in.
A tire already at or below its minimum tread says Replace now whatever its mount history. There is no remaining life to project, so an incomplete mount history does not hold that answer back, and the card no longer asks for an odometer instead.
When a tire's current tread drops to or below its minimum tread, MyGarage creates a reminder called Tire tread low (FL) for that position. It shows up alongside your other reminders, so the calendar and your notification channels pick it up with no extra setup.
A tire in storage gets Tire tread low (in storage) rather than a corner. The reminder belongs to the tire itself rather than to its title, so two stored tires no longer collide on one reminder, and a reminder you wrote yourself under the same name is neither adopted nor completed for you.
These reminders can be edited like any other. A pending one left uneditable by an older version (a combined date-and-mileage reminder carrying no mileage, which every edit rejected) repairs itself to a plain date reminder the next time its tire syncs; one you have since given a real mileage target is left alone.
Record a tread above the threshold, or replace the tire, and the reminder is marked done on its own. Clearing the tread field does not: an unknown tread leaves the reminder pending, because not having measured a tire is not the same as having measured it and found it fine.
This is why the minimum tread value matters. The default of 2.0 mm is close to
the legal limit in many places; set it higher if you would rather replace early.
- Record the DOT code when the tire is new. It is the only reliable way to tell a tire's age later, and it is much easier to read in a shop than in a driveway.
- Check all four at once and log all four readings. Uneven wear between positions is the signal worth catching, and you only see it if the readings share a date.
- Log the odometer (or the hour meter, on an hours vehicle) with each reading. Distance-based projection is more useful than date-based for a vehicle that sits.
- Track the spare. It ages out on the DOT code even though the tread never moves.
- Managing Vehicles - vehicle setup and settings
- Brakes - pads, rotors and drums per corner, logged while the wheels are off
- Service Visits - rotations, mounting, and balancing costs
- Analytics - where tire spending shows up
- Units - choosing your tread and pressure units