The tyre you rang about is rarely the interesting one. By the time we are alongside a car at two in the morning there is a lamp up, the tools are out and somebody is on their knees beside a wheel, which is a combination of things that happens to most cars perhaps once in a couple of years. It would be a waste of all that to look at one corner and pack up.
The look at the other three is not a formality either. A gauge goes on all four, because the one that failed is very seldom the only one that has drifted. Tread depth gets read right across the width rather than down the middle groove, since the inner shoulder is where a car with tired geometry quietly destroys itself and it is the last place anybody thinks to check. A hand goes over each tread to find the screw or the flint that has gone in but has not yet gone through, which is the cheapest thing you will ever be told. And the sidewalls of anything older get a look along them for fine crazing, which says more about how much life a tyre has left than the tread depth does. Five minutes, with everything already set up, and it is why people stop being surprised by their tyres.
The half-term getaway starts at four in the morning, and so do the calls. Car loaded, everybody in, and a tyre that looked fine last week sitting visibly soft on the drive in Holland Park. The wheel comes off in Phillimore, not on a ramp in Chelsea. Nothing is towed out of Gloucester Road or Earl's Court Road; the work finishes there.
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Cars in W8 often cover very little distance and spend most of their lives standing in residents bays around Phillimore and the streets off the High Street, which means their tyres tend to age rather than wear out. That changes what is worth looking for. Tread depth on a car like that is usually fine for years while the sidewalls slowly harden and the alignment quietly eats the inner edges. Those are not things a driver ever sees, and the only realistic chance to catch them is when a wheel happens to be off for something else.
A puncture repaired at midnight turned up a screw sitting in the opposite front tyre, driven in but not yet through. Found with the lamp already up, it cost nothing to deal with. Found a fortnight later it would have been another callout.
A car near Cornwall Gardens had plenty of tread in the middle and almost none on the inside edge of both fronts. Nothing about that is visible from the pavement, and the driver had no idea.
The tyre we came out for was flat and the other three were all noticeably low. Whoever had last set them had done it a long time ago, which is more common than people think.
Because the wheel is already off, the light is already up and somebody who knows what they are looking at is already kneeling there. All of that costs a great deal to arrange and nothing at all to use. Most of the problems we find this way would otherwise have turned into a second callout.
It is wear concentrated on the inside edge of the tread, usually caused by the car's alignment being out. It hides because that edge faces the middle of the car and you cannot see it from the kerb without turning the wheels onto full lock. Tyres are regularly scrapped for it with plenty of tread still showing in the centre.
It is worth dealing with, and do not pull it out. A screw can sit in the tread sealing its own hole for weeks and then let go on a fast road at the worst possible moment. Have it looked at while the tyre is still holding air, because that is when it is most likely to be repairable.
No. It is a few minutes at the end while the tools are still out, and it happens on every job whatever the hour. If everything is sound we say so and pack up, which is a perfectly good outcome and takes no longer than saying nothing would have done.
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