The inner shoulder is the part of a tyre nobody ever looks at. It faces in towards the car, it hides behind the arch, and unless the steering is on full lock and you have a torch you cannot see it at all. It is also where the evidence usually is.
A tracking setting that has drifted wears that edge first and leaves the rest of the tread looking respectable. A kerb strike pinches the wall going in and marks the inside face rather than the outside. Cuts from debris often land there, because that is the side sweeping the gutter. A tyre can be three quarters legal, look normal from the pavement, and be down to the belt on an edge its owner has never seen.
Night work suits this. The car is standing still, nobody is waiting for the bay, and while we are there for whatever you rang about, we put a torch down the inside of all four. For many cars it is the only inspection they get between one test and the next.
A 24-hour service is only worth anything if somebody actually sets off. Whether it is the middle of the night on Fulham Palace Road or first thing on a Sunday with the car sat outside the house in Parsons Green, the phone gets answered, a fully-equipped van is dispatched and the tyre is repaired or replaced where the car is standing. Underground parking in Parsons Green or Walham Green is worth flagging. A Walham Green cul-de-sac or a Munster Village main road, tell us which. SW6 takes in Sands End and Hurlingham, and we work the lot.
24-hour tyre callout in Fulham is part of our wider 24-hour emergency callout cover. For 24-hour tyre callout in Fulham, call 07717 389637 or send us your details for a price.
Cars in SW6 spend their lives parked nose to tail on permit bays, and the inner face of every tyre sits where its owner can never get at it. Overnight the streets are still and there is room to stand at the wheel and use a torch properly. Ask us to look at the other three while we are there.
The nail was repairable and was repaired. The torch then found the inner shoulder of the other front tyre worn down to the belt, which no amount of walking round the car would have shown. That car had passed a test four months earlier.
A kerb caught while reversing into a bay near Hurlingham had opened a clean slice in the inner sidewall, deep enough to show cord. From the pavement the wheel looked scuffed and the tyre looked fine. That one was changed the same night.
A driver who had been told elsewhere that two tyres were needed asked us to look while we were out for something unrelated. Both edges were wearing evenly, both inner shoulders were clean and there was tread to spare. We said so, fitted nothing and went.
Mostly geometry. Front wheels are usually set to lean slightly at the top and to point very slightly inwards, and both load the inner edge more than the outer. Add a knock from a pothole and that becomes uneven wear which eats one edge.
It should, on the day it happens. The trouble is that a badly set front end can take an inner shoulder down to the belt inside a few thousand miles, which is nothing like a year. A test is a snapshot.
The fronts, yes. Turn the steering to full lock, get a torch onto the inside edge of the tyre now pointing outwards, and run a hand along it feeling for a step or exposed cord. Never put a hand under a car held up by a jack alone.
For the front, not usually. Full lock and a light are enough to see and feel the inner shoulder. For the rear the wheel comes off, which is a reason to have it done during a visit you were making anyway.
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