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What Does a Red or Yellow Dot on Your Tires Mean? | It's to help service technicians properly install and balance the tire. Red - flattest/lowest point on the tire. Yellow - lightest part of the tire

What Does a Red or Yellow Dot on Your Tires Mean?

https://web.archive.org/web/20240125214714/https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/red-or-yellow-dot-tire/

If you had new tires installed recently, red and yellow paint dots on the sidewall are perfectly normal. Here's why they're there.

What Does a Red or Yellow Dot on Your Tires Mean?

5 comments

Tedrow

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Pretty sure it indicates tire repairs/plugs. You can only have so many before it's a safety issue.

Edit: I had to go look this up and I was severely misinformed it seems. The yellow dot indicates the heaviest point of the tire, which lines up with the valve stem. The red dot is the lightest point of the tire. This is used for balancing.

Edit 2: Had to update again. I'm getting lots of conflicting information from different sources and now have no idea. Something with balancing tires though.

Il_winters_lI

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New tires come with the dots from the factory. The red dot needs to be lined up with the valve stem.

Tedrow

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Thanks, updated my response.

BradleyUffner

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If so, it isn't universal. I just had a tire fixed with a plug and there were no colored dots.

Tedrow

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Thanks, updated my response.