Kansas City Auto Repair

Kansas City drivers know that underinflated tires wear out more quickly. Underinflation is also a major cause of tire failure for Missouri auto owners. More flats, blow outs, skids and longer stopping distances are all results of underinflated tires.It's hard for many Kansas City drivers to tell when a radial tire is underinflated. If your owner’s manual recommends 35 pounds of pressure, your tire is considered significantly under-inflated at 26 pounds. The tire may not look low until it gets below 20 pounds.Uncle Sam to the rescue! A recent U.S. federal law required vehicle manufacturer’s to include a Tire Pressure Monitoring System - or TPMS system - in all vehicles. Many Canadian vehicles have them as well.  The system is a dashboard mounted warning light that goes off if one or more of the tires falls 25% below its pressure recommendations.Obviously, all of this doesn't come free for Kansas City car ow ... read more

  It seems like everywhere you go in the Kansas City area you see custom wheels. Big trucks, little cars, mini-vans - it doesn't matter - are expressing themselves with custom wheels. Some Missouri auto owners want smaller tires and wheels - some want larger - and some want them enormous. So where do you start if you want new wheels? At I - 70 Auto Service, we suggest you start with your budget. We know, that sounds so practical. But if the look you're after goes beyond just new tires and wheels and enters into the world of suspension modifications, you need to be prepared for the additional cost.Let's start with something easy - you want to give your ride a unique look and the stock wheel size is just right for you. One of the concerns you will have is that the new wheels have the same offset as your vehicle factory wheels.Your tire and wheel professional at I - 70 Auto Service in Kansas City can help you find the right size wheel or install adapters to make your new wh ... read more

Welcome to the I - 70 Auto Service automotive blog. Today, let's talk about the effect of tire wear. Let's focus on stopping in wet Kansas City conditions. In order for a tire to have good contact with the road, it has to move the water out of the way. If it can't move the water, the tire will actually ride on top of a thin film of water.That's called hydroplaning. If it's really bad, Kansas City drivers can actually spin out of control - endangering themselves and the other drivers around them. At best, you won't stop as fast. So how does a tire move water? It has channels for water to flow through. Look at your vehicle tire and you'll see channels: channels that run around the tire and channels that flow across the tire. They're designed to direct water away from the tire so it can contact the road better.And the deeper the channel, the more water it can move. A brand new I - 70 Auto Service tire has very deep channels and can easily move a lot ... read more

With the recent focus in the Kansas City area on improving fuel economy, we've been told how important it is to maintain our tire pressure.Kansas City drivers know that tires wear out, but we want to make them last as long as possible because they're not cheap to replace. In addition to saving gas, properly inflated tires last longer. Underinflated tires will wear out more quickly.Some people in Kansas City wonder if they should add a few extra pounds of pressure when they fill up their tires. Bad idea. In fact, there are very good reasons not to overinflate your tires. For one, the middle of the tread will wear unevenly because the full tread is not contacting the road properly. That also adversely affects your handling. Stop by I - 70 Auto Service to see about tire maintenance for your vehicle. I - 70 Auto Service3111 Stadium Dr.Kansas City, Missouri 64128816-921-0505http://www.i70autoservice.com ... read more

Driving on bald tires is like playing roulette. Though you may be fine today, eventually your luck is going to run out.The Feds don't have any laws for tread depth, but 42 of the states, and all of Canada, do have regulations. They consider 2/32 of an inch to be the minimum legal tread depth. Two other states, including California, consider 1/32 to be the minimum and six states have no standards at all. Call us at I - 70 Auto Service; (just call 816-921-0505) to find out what your requirements are in the Kansas City, Missouri, area.Since 1968, U.S. law has required that a raised bar be molded across all tires. When tires are worn enough that this bar becomes visible, there's just 2/32 inch/1.6 mm of tread left. But does that older standard give Kansas City vehicles enough safety?Consider this: Consumer Reports recommends tire replacement when tread reaches 4/32 inch/3.2 mm. And the recommendation is backed by some very compelling studies. Now before we go into th ... read more

Do you ever shop for shoes in one of our Kansas City area shoe stores?When buying a running shoe, is quality important?Does durability matter as long as the shoes look fabulous?Would you rather have one pair of long lasting shoes or two pair of lower quality shoes at the same price?Is the warranty important when buying tires?When you choose new tires in Kansas City, what's the most important factor for you? Give us a call at I - 70 Auto Service at 816-921-0505 for tire recommendations. You know, buying tires in Kansas City is a big deal. It's a big ticket item so you know you'll be spending a lot. You're not only concerned about the price, but you want to know that it'll be a long time before you need to buy new tires again.And of course there's the safety aspect as well. The tires do a lot of work – they carry the weight of the vehicle and you and your passengers. They need to be up to the task. You wan ... read more

Looking at getting some new tires? Maybe the real reason for wanting those off-highway tires is that they look cool. Well there's nothing wrong with that. If you make sure that you've got your functional needs covered with your selection, then you can have some fun with where you go from there.Let's suppose you zip around Kansas City in a sporty car. You may like to run a high-performance summer tire when the weather's good. When Missouri weather turns cold, you can put on high-performance winter tires. For the kind of driving you like to do, you want full-on performance tires. All-season tires are naturally a compromise that works well for most Kansas City drivers, but since you have a choice, go for dedicated summer and winter tires.When it's time for new tires, visit with a knowledgeable I - 70 Auto Service tire professional. Describe your needs and wants. He'll come up with some selections for you to discuss. And once you settle on a type of tire, there are options for special nee ... read more

All new passenger vehicles on our Kansas City, Missouri, roads now have tire pressure monitoring systems – TPMS for short. They are designed to alert you if your tires are underinflated. Since they are fairly new, a lot of people have questions about them.First off, the most important thing is that you still need to check your tire pressure every week – or at least every time you gas up. The TPMS system alert comes in when your tire is 20 percent below the factory recommendation. So if the recommended pressure is 34 pounds per square inch, the TPMS warning won't come on until the pressure is at 28 pounds. That's significantly underinflated, enough to raise safety concerns.The worst is tire failure. A severely underinflated tire can overheat and fail. Also, handling degrades to the point that you may not be able to steer out of trouble. Also underinflated tires wear out faster and they waste f ... read more

You know you need newtires, but you're not sure what type. You look at a tire to get the size: 225, 50, R, 16, 92, H. All the way to the Kansas City service center you keep repeating it over and over. You even say it over in your mind while waiting in line. Then you get to the counter and the manager asks what size you need. Then your mind goes blank.Tire size can be confusing for many Kansas City drivers. There's so much on the side of the tire, and it's hard to keep straight.Even though there's a lot on a tire - if you know what it all means, it's actually more helpful than confusing for Kansas City tire shoppers. Let's start with the size number.For example, let's say a tire reads: 225 50 R 16 92 H. The 225 part is the width of the tire in millimeters - the width between the sidewalls of an inflated tire with no load. The 50 is the aspect ratio - the ratio of the sidewall height to the tread width. Off-road tires will have a higher number and ... read more

Why are wheel bearings for Kansas City vehicles important? It's simple: your wheel bearings keep the wheels on your vehicle. In today's I - 70 Auto Service post, we'll discuss more about wheel bearings and how you can make sure they can do their very job while you drive around Kansas City, Missouri. Wheel bearings are pretty simple parts. They're made of high quality steel and are engineered to last 100,000 miles (160,000)  or more if properly cared for. The bearings do two jobs: First, they allow the wheel to freely rotate with as little friction as possible. Second, they support the weight of the vehicle. For example, if your car weighs 3,600 pounds (1600 kilogram), each wheel has to support approximately 900 pounds (400 kilograms). That's a lot of heavy lifting over those long distances.Even though wheel bearings are pretty straightforward, they need to be in near perfect condition to do their job for Kansas City vehicles. The bearings are packed with heavy gre ... read more