The test is at half eight in the morning, and at ten the night before you crouch down with a torch and find the front pair are finished. That is a common enough evening for us to have a routine for it. Two tyres, fitted on the driveway or at the kerb, in the dark, before the test rather than after the failure.
Tread depth is not a single measurement. The legal minimum is 1.6mm across the central three quarters of the tread and right the way round, so a groove that reads healthily on the outer edge proves nothing if the inner edge is bald. Cars that live on short urban journeys wear unevenly, and the worn part is very often the inside shoulder, where you cannot see it without turning the wheel to full lock and getting a light on it.
A call at ten at night about tyres is not an emergency in the usual sense. Nobody is stranded and nothing is leaking. It is simply the last hour available before the test, and we happen to be open in it.
Away from home is when it stings. A hotel car park, a friend's street, somewhere you do not know and where you certainly do not know which fitter to ring. If that happens to be Tooting Broadway or anywhere else round Tooting, it is one number. The wheel comes off in Amen Corner, not on a ramp in Balham. Nothing is towed out of Furzedown or Bec Common; the work finishes there. A SW17 address in Furzedown and one in Bec Common are the same round.
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Test centres open early and shut at the usual time, which leaves no useful window to sort tyres out on the morning itself. Sitting in the A24 traffic to reach one for eight, then finding they cannot squeeze you in, is how a whole day disappears. Working at night means the car keeps its space on the permit streets in Tooting Graveney.
Both fronts measured under the limit on the inside edge and just over it on the outside. We fitted a matched pair at the kerb, set the pressures from the door plate, and the car went to its appointment on legal tyres.
The advisory had come back on one tyre and the fail on another. Rather than book the car in somewhere and lose a second day, the owner had us out that evening off Tooting Bec Road and drove straight to the retest in the morning.
A driver checking the car over the night before spotted cords showing on an inner shoulder that had looked perfectly healthy from the pavement. That tyre would have failed the test, and it was not safe to drive it there either.
Almost always. A failure means the car is off the road until it is put right, and then you are chasing a retest slot too. Two tyres fitted the previous evening cost you an evening. Two fitted after a fail cost you the test and the days in between.
Because the wear is rarely even. Tracking that is slightly out, or a car that spends its life turning in and out of tight bays, takes the inside shoulder down first. Testers measure across the whole tread width, not the quarter of it facing the pavement.
Yes. We carry our own lighting and work off the van, so a permit bay outside the house is an ordinary place for this. You need not stand there for it either, provided we can reach the car and have the locking key.
Legal, yes. Sensible, not particularly. Wet grip falls away well before the 1.6mm limit, and a tyre at 2mm in the autumn will be under it by the spring. If we are already fitting one, that is the moment to deal with the other.
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