Driving round here is mostly braking. Between the traffic circling Southgate Circus, the humps on the estate roads and parked cars that turn an avenue into a single lane, a car does more hard stops in a week than a motorway commuter manages in a month. Nearly always the anti-lock system deals with it and the tyre is none the wiser. Now and then, on wet leaves or a patch of spilt diesel, a wheel locks for a second and drags.
What that leaves behind is a flat spot: a patch of tread about the length of your hand, scrubbed noticeably shallower than everything around it. No balance weight will fix it, because the problem is that the tyre is no longer round rather than no longer balanced. It shows up as a thump through the floor that arrives at one speed and fades away at another. We measure across it with a depth gauge instead of eyeballing it. Shallow, with plenty of rubber left, and it will often wear back in. Down to the limit on that patch, or with belt showing through, and the tyre is finished.
Tyres on the same axle should be a matched pair, and one damaged tyre is where that goes wrong. The replacement itself is fitted and balanced where the car stands in N14, with the alloy and pressure sensor checked as the wheel goes back on. A 4am Winchmore Hill call and a noon Oakwood call reach the same fitter. Whether it is Cockfosters in rush hour or Bramley Road at midnight, we answer. N14 takes in Osidge and Winchmore Hill, and we work the lot.
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The everyday roads round here are slow enough that a flat spot can go unnoticed for weeks. It announces itself on the first longer run out along Cockfosters Road or up past Trent Park, when the speed finally rises far enough to turn a scrubbed patch into a thump you cannot ignore. If that is when you first felt it, the tyre has probably been like that a while.
Reported as a wheel bearing, and it was not. A hand sized patch of tread on the front left sat a millimetre shallower than the rest of the tyre, which is a shape problem no balancing rig will cure.
An emergency stop on a slippery road left one front tyre marked and the other untouched. We measured both, found the flat spot still well clear of the limit and told the owner to keep an eye on it.
A car brought home on a badly loaded lift had worn a rear tyre almost down to the belt in one small area. That one was not a judgement call. It came off and a new tyre went on.
No. Balancing corrects weight distribution, and a flat spot is a change in shape. You could add lead to that rim all day and the tyre would still land on the same patch once per revolution. The cures are wearing it back in or replacing it.
Usually, if the tread on the flat is still well above the limit and nothing is showing through. What should not be ignored is a thump that is getting worse, because that means the flat is deepening rather than wearing out.
1.6mm across the central three quarters of the tyre, right the way round the circumference. Below that it is an offence per tyre, and a flat spot counts. Treat it as a minimum, not a target, because wet grip falls off long before you reach it.
It can be, and the two feel similar from the driver's seat. The difference shows on the rim. A buckle wobbles visibly when the wheel is spun, while a flat spot sits still and only announces itself once the car is rolling.
Not to find it. A depth gauge and a slow push of the car will locate a flat spot in a couple of minutes at the kerb. The wheel only comes off if the answer is a replacement, or if the inner shoulder needs a proper look.
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