Look at what this sort of driving does to a tyre. Full lock in and out of parking bays, tight spiral ramps on the decks around Stratford City, roundabout after roundabout on the way in and out of town: all of it loads the outer shoulder far harder than the middle. The result is a tyre showing four millimetres in the groove you looked at and next to nothing on the edge you cannot see without turning the steering.
The legal minimum is 1.6mm, and the part of the wording people miss is where it applies: across the central three quarters of the tread, right the way round the tyre. So a real check means a gauge used in three places across the width, inner, middle and outer, repeated at several points around the circumference. One reading in one groove tells you almost nothing. Where the wear sits also says something about the car rather than the tyre. Worn on the inner edge alone is usually alignment. Worn on both shoulders is usually low pressure. Worn down the middle is too much of it. We say which it looks like, or the new tyre goes the same way.
An MOT advisory about a tyre is a warning with a date on it. We can look at the car where it sits, in Pudding Mill or Bow, and give you a straight view, then fit the replacement there and then if that is what it needs. Whether it is Bow in rush hour or Ruckholt Road at midnight, we answer. On Blackwall Tunnel approach, day or night, Pudding Mill included, arrival across E15 runs 30 to 60 minutes.
Broken tyre replacement in Stratford is part of our wider 24-hour emergency callout cover. For broken tyre replacement in Stratford, call 07717 389637 or get a price for your tyre.
Cars here do a punishing kind of mileage without covering much ground: slow, heavily steered, kerb to kerb, then left standing for days at a stretch. That combination wears the shoulders unevenly and ages the rubber at the same time, so tread depth on its own is a poor guide to whether a tyre is finished. Measuring it properly across the width takes a minute and settles the argument either way.
The owner had checked it with a coin in the centre groove and been satisfied. The inner shoulder was down onto the wear bars and had been for some time, which is a fail and a real problem in the wet.
A kerb in a Stratford town centre bay had taken the lettering clean off the sidewall and frightened the driver into calling. There was no bulge and no cord showing, so the tyre stayed on the car and nothing was sold.
Parked outside a house in West Ham for most of the month and used at weekends. Low mileage, plenty of tread, and sidewalls crazed all over from age and sunlight. Those tyres were finished whatever the gauge said.
1.6mm, measured across the central three quarters of the tread and around the whole circumference. Anything under that, anywhere in that band, puts the tyre outside the law, and it counts per tyre rather than per car.
Easily, on this sort of mileage. A tyre sitting near the limit in spring can be through it by the summer, and the test only records the day it was done. Wear that is concentrated on one edge moves faster still.
They are the wear indicators, moulded in level with 1.6mm. When the tread is flush with them the tyre is at the legal limit, not approaching it. Most people are surprised how much tread still looks present when that happens.
It does. Fine cracking is the rubber ageing and losing its flexibility, and it happens to cars that sit still as much as to cars that work. Deep cracking means the tyre is done regardless of what a depth gauge says.
No. Plenty of people leave the car and go back to work. Give us the location and a phone number, and you get the readings and a straight verdict on each tyre before anything is fitted.
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