| Doctor of tyres
• Reveals what can make vehicle tyres burst
By COSMAS OMEGOH
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Nigerian roads are home to many carcasses of vehicles involved
in one form of accident or the other. Many owners and occupants
of these ill-fated vehicles were either killed or maimed.
Many people have blamed most accidents on bad vehicle tyres.
A tyre expert, Mr Augustine Ifebueme, said Nigerians have
much more to worry about tyres.
Ifebueme a tyre sales manager, Mantrac Nigeria Limited, formerly
Tractor and Equipment Nigeria Limited, has been at the centre
of a discreet campaign for safety on the highways. He is worried
that ignorance about how tyres can kill and save envelopes
Nigeria.
He said: "When I warn people that the most important
component of a vehicle is the tyre, they insist it is the
engine oil. They insist that if there is no engine oil, there
will be engine knock. But the truth is that if one is careful,
he will not experience any form of engine knock. The moment
one kick-starts his car engine in the morning, the dash board
shows whether one is low on oil or not. It warns of an imminent
danger ahead against which one must act fast and prevent.
Now, all what one needs to do is simply open the car burnet
and fix the problem.
"But if one’s car tyre is going to burst in the
next 10 minutes, there is nothing absolutely to show that
one is low on pressure, that one needs to check out on his
tyres or else face serious danger ahead. I don’t think
we have anything of such yet. May be we will have that someday
in the future, but for now, there is none. And that is why
tyre education is important; that is why every one of us needs
to take tyres seriously"
Ifebueme’s interest in tyres grew over the years from
his long involment in tyre sales working with Michelin Nigerian
Ltd and Mantrac Nigeria Ltd. He claimed that he decided to
embark on tyre education based on the questions customers
used to ask him, which he considered vital to safety on the
roads.
Those questions, according to him, had led him to giving tutorials
and information on tyre care and maintenance to customers
any time he had the opportunity, as his own way of providing
safety awareness to the public.
According to Mr. Ifebueme, it is not enough for a company
to sell tyres to its customers and smile to the bank. Every
tyre shop must offer useful tips on tyre use and abuse as
way of preventing accidents on the highways. He maintained
that tyre users must seek useful professional tips each time
they buy tyres so that, that can help them to understand and
maintain their vehicle tyres.
"Anyone wishing to buy tyres must ensure that he buys
the right size for his vehicle, taking special note of the
vehicle’s speed limit and load capacity. Mostly, some
Nigerians buy tyres they don’t need. They buy tyres
just because they are new. Often, people come to me insisiting
that they want to buy a certain size of tyre simply because
the tokunbo vehicle they bought came in with similar size
of tyres. When I ask them to tell me what use they want to
put the vehicle, they flare up in a rage. But they don’t
know what the previous owner of the vehicle was using it for
before he sold it off. It was possible the former owner was
using his vehicle for school runs, or to carry light goods
before disposing of it.
"Now, the Nigerian who eventually buys the vehicle may
decide to use it for public transportion: carrying passengers
from, let’s say Lagos to Ibadan or Benin. In this case,
he needs a different set of tyres because the vehicle will
be carrying more loads. If he fails to do that, some day soon,
one or more of the tyres will burst, and the passengers will
be exposed to grave danger."
Ifebueme equally dropped some word of caution for Nigerians
who patronise used tyres.
He said: "Care should as well be taken in handling tokunbo
tyres. Most of them get damaged before arriving the country.
Most tokunbo vehicles coming into the country have tyre fitted
to them and parked at a spot for an upward of six or more
months. Once a vehicle tyre remains in that condition for
that length of time, they are obviously damaged though they
may still look new with their trades intact. The portion that
makes contact with the ground for that long time is obviously
gone. If such a tyre is put to use, it will be a source of
danger when the vehicle is in motion; it may peel off or burst,
resulting in a serious road hazard."
He expressed sadness that because of ignorance and mostly
negligence, many Nigerians subject themselves to avoidable
mistakes, which can result in accidents.
He said failure to fit common valve cover which cost as low
as N5 can be a potential source of accident, adding "when
you look at your tyre, you will notice a valve through which
the tyre is pumped. Every tyre has a valve cover. Often, most
drivers lose their valve covers and neglect to replace them.
That can be potentially dangerous.
"Once the tyre valve is lost, that is an open invitation
to sand and mud to go into the tyre. When this happens, it
can cause a little spring inside the tyre to rust. It is this
spring that stabilises the air inside the tyre. It allows
air to go inside the tyre when it is being vulcanised, and
hold the same air from escaping once inside. If the spring
rusts, it can no longer be elastic, meaning that it can no
longer spring as usual. That means that a big damage has been
done to the tyre.
If one now vulcanizes such a tyre at some point and believes
a good job has been done, he may not know that there is a
disaster looming. The moment he speeds off after wards, he
may not know that his tyre has begun to lose pressure. And
because he has just vulcanized his tyre, his attention will
not go to the tyre anymore. The problem will continue untill
the tyre finally bursts, even when it is still new, fresh
and harmless. That leaves the driver wondering what went wrong.
That is if he is alive to ask that question."
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