Driving With Tire Bulge: Causes & Is It Safe?

While enjoying a great ride with your friends or family, a tire bulge may become visible to you. It is sore to the eye. But more than that, a tire bulge can be detrimental to your safety and the safety of your car, co-passengers, and other people around you if you continue to drive your car as usual and ignore getting it repaired fast.

Before sharing with you the possible causes behind a tire bulge and how to fix it, we would like to tell you what a tire bulge exactly is.

What is a Tire Bulge?

A tire bulge is an egg-shaped protrusion on the sidewall of your car’s wheel. Tire bulges are known by various names like bulges, tire bubbles, sidewall protrusions, etc.

A tire bulge involves an impact on the road, pinching the tire against the rim and damaging its inner lining. This causes pressurized air to migrate from the tire’s internal layers to its outside layer to escape. Instead, the air accumulates under the tire’s outer layer, bulging the tire.

Causes: Tire Bulge

Now, it is time to reveal the various reasons for tire bulges.

Impacts on the Road

Various kinds of impacts can cause tire bulges, including the following ones. While driving your car fast, your vehicle may hit a pothole on the road. Your car fails to negotiate a railroad crossing properly. Your car jumps a curb or sidewalk as you are parking it. Speed bumps on the road hit your car’s wheels. With time, all these things can impact your car’s tires and damage their inner liner, resulting in a tire bulge.

Overloading or Under Inflating the Tire

Filling excessive or less air is also a common cause of a tire bulge. If your vehicle is too heavy, underinflating the tires can put too much pressure on them, causing them to fail. Moreover, under-inflating does not provide tires the support they need to handle the vehicle properly. It would help if you avoided overloading the tires and underinflating them for their safety.

Cold Climate

If you reside in an area with a colder climate, there is an increased likelihood of a bulge developing in your tire’s sidewall.

Manufacturing Fault

A tire bulge may also be due to a manufacturing issue, but this is rare. If this is the case and your repair is covered under warranty, you should inform the concerned manufacturing company or procure a form from your insurance service. Apart from that, you should also obtain a receipt for any work the mechanics do.

Wearing out of Rubber

Covering long distances and using your car over the years can cause wear and tear on your tires’ rubber, which eventually can result in a tire bulge.

After covering the potential causes of tire bulges, we would like to share the remedies for them.

How to Fix Tire Bulges?

You may notice a tire bulge in your car’s tire either at your home or while on a drive. In case you are at home, you should not drive at all. Instead, you should call a mechanic at your home who will replace the affected tire with a new one. Replacement is the only remedy if your tire develops a bulge. No amount of repair can put your tire back to its previous shape.

You should visit your local service station, where mechanics will replace the tire if you can visibly see the tire bulging. Make sure you drive slowly and steadily, so you don’t mess anything else up.

Rather than replacing one tire with a new one, you should change all or two tires in one go.

If you are tight on budget, you can get a part-worn tire from your local scrapyard. For such a replacement to fit better, the rest of your tires should also be pretty worn.

Driving With Tire Bulge: Causes & Is It Safe?

What is a Tire Bulge?