The can in the boot of most new cars is a get-you-home device, and it is worth understanding exactly what it does before you find yourself deciding at two in the morning. It pumps a latex compound into the tyre, spreads it round with the wheel turning and clogs the hole from the inside with something that sets. That works, briefly, on a small nail hole in the middle of the tread. It does nothing whatsoever for a cut, a leak at the rim or anything larger than the puncture it was designed around, and between them those account for a good deal of what actually goes wrong.
At night the calculation gets worse. You cannot see what you are dealing with by torchlight, so you are gambling on it being the one fault the can can handle. Meanwhile the compound coats the inside of the tyre and the sensor if the wheel has one, and every bit of it has to be cleaned out before a proper repair can be attempted, assuming the tyre is still repairable by then. So the honest position is this. If you are somewhere genuinely unsafe and moving is the priority, use it. If you are parked and waiting, do not, because the tyre you have now is worth more than the one you would be left with.
Cold nights take pressure out of every tyre on the car, and one of them is usually already leaking. That is why the calls cluster on the first properly cold mornings of the year: a tyre that had been coping suddenly is not. We are out on those mornings from before it is light, across NW10, checking whether it is a genuine puncture, a perished valve or simply four tyres that have all lost a few psi. Whichever it is, it is sorted where the car is parked: a repair to British Standard, a valve, or a replacement from the van. The car does not have to move to find out.
24-hour tyre callout in Harlesden is part of our wider 24-hour emergency callout cover. For 24-hour tyre callout in Harlesden, call 07717 389637 or get a price for your tyre.
Nights around here are not quiet nights. Deliveries run into Park Royal at all hours and the High Street carries traffic long after the shops have shut, so a driver with a flat often feels pressure to do something immediately rather than sit and wait for somebody. That pressure is what the can in the boot is really sold on. Unless where you have stopped is genuinely unsafe, sitting tight is the better call, because a tyre left as it is can usually be repaired and a tyre full of sealant frequently cannot.
A tyre treated with sealant on a dark stretch of Acton Lane had a screw dead in the centre of the tread and would have patched easily. Cleaning the compound out was possible, but the tyre had been driven on soft first, and that was the part that finished it.
Another driver emptied a can into a tyre with a slice across the shoulder and got nothing at all for it. The compound cannot bridge a gap that size, and it left a mess inside a tyre that was scrap either way.
A car parked near Craven Park kept its hazards on and its can in the boot. The puncture was repaired properly, the tyre stayed on the car, and nothing had to be washed out of it first.
On a small nail hole in the centre of the tread, temporarily, yes. On a cut, a sidewall injury, a leak at the rim or anything more than a few millimetres across, no. The difficulty is that you cannot tell which of those you are looking at while the tyre is still on the car in the dark.
Not always, but it makes the repair harder and it sometimes takes the decision out of your hands. The compound has to be cleaned off the inside of the tyre and off the sensor before anyone can prepare the surface, and a lasting repair depends entirely on that surface being clean and dry.
Getting away from somewhere unsafe. If the car is in a live traffic lane or a spot you would rather not be sitting in, a temporary fix has genuine value. Parked in a bay waiting for us, it has none, because the same tyre stands a far better chance untouched.
Leave the tyre alone, hazards on, stay in the car with the doors shut and tell us precisely where you are parked. We bring our own lighting and work at the kerb, and typical arrival is 30 to 60 minutes at any hour, weekends and bank holidays included.
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