How to Improve Your Ride Quality

Looking for the Best Way to Improve Ride Quality?

How Do You Improve Ride Quality?

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When considering the time we spend in our cars you start to realize that the way the ride feels is extremely important to ensure comfort. Most people are looking to find comfort on the road, especially if they find themselves going on long trips or even just commuting to work. There are plenty of factors that affect your vehicles ride quality; whether that be a car, truck or SUV. The biggest factors that you have some control over are your tires, wheels, and the suspension. Continue below to understand how these factors affect your ride quality and what you can do to improve that.

Avoid Bigger Wheels

Generally speaking, when considering increasing the size of your wheels you are automatically accepting the fact that your ride will be rougher on the road. If you are looking to get a smoother ride without an expensive modification, then consider switching to a smaller wheel size and adding a thicker tire. It’s typically recommended to only increase or decrease wheel size by about an inch. A car suspension and brakes were designed around the original tire set up, so dramatic changes to the wheels could damage the suspension and could also not fit around the brake calipers, if they’re too small. When shopping for a car you’ll want to make sure you ask yourself what you’re trying to get out of your car. If you’re looking to have a car that is has some good handling, but you’re not as concerned about ride quality, then opt for bigger wheels. If you prefer a smoother ride, then opt for the smaller wheels and thicker tire.

Wheels Matter

Choose the Right Tires

Next on our list is the tires, yet another crucial factor to maintaining ride quality on your vehicle. The very first thing you’ll want to learn about tires is that not all tires are the same. You’ll find tires on the market that are performance driven for the road, which will be made out of softer compounds in order to increase traction, but they will decrease your tire life and increase road noise. On the opposite side of that coin you have touring tires, which are meant for the daily drivers who spend most of their time on roads where speeds don’t go higher than 75/80 miles per hour. The benefit to touring tires is that they ride softer, last longer and in some cases improve fuel efficiency. With those two tire categories in mind, there are obviously tons of other sub-categories out there that blend the advantages of a touring and performance tire to give you a piece of both worlds. A final food for thought to end this section is to always consider the quality of the tire. Consider buying quality tires from a name you trust, like Bill Luke Santan, to ensure you’re making the right purchase for your car.

Find Tires that Work for You

Change Suspension Parts

One of the biggest factors that play a role in ride quality is your suspension, but swapping out suspension parts is definitely more complicated than dealing with wheels and tires. If you plan to change your suspension, we recommend focusing your attention first on your struts and your shocks. Both of these parts are very similar in the sense that they both do the same thing, which is absorbing bumps on the road and limiting the bouncy feel of your car. You will need to first figure out whether your car uses struts or shocks, or both. Most front-wheel-drive cars and crossovers will have struts up front and shocks in the back. When you do start noticing that your car is a little too bouncy then it may be time to check on your struts and shocks. At Bill Luke Santan, we service all makes and models and can get your car in & out quickly so that you can enjoy your ride again. When considering which parts to buy you have the option to purchase the OEM parts or after-market options, we carry both. Just contact our parts department.

Be Mindful of Your Suspension

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When you’re out on the road, it’s easy to start to become complacent with your car’s ride quality because you may think it is part of the process when a car gets old. The reality is that these parts are available for a reason. You can keep your car riding very similar to the way it rode the day your drove it off the lot, and sometimes even better! Remember that we spend a lot of time in our cars, about 18 days per year on average, so make sure that those 18 days feel like the days you spend on a comfortable couch! Call us at Bill Luke Santan today, and we’ll get your ride quality back to where it needs to be.