We went out to a soft rear tyre on a driveway in Long Ditton and spent most of the visit looking at the front of the car instead. One front tyre was a premium brand with roughly six millimetres left on it. The other was the cheapest thing on the shelf the day it was bought, down to a little over two. Nobody had done anything wrong. Tyres get replaced one at a time, when they fail, at whichever place happened to be open that week.
The trouble is that a car does not brake on a tyre, it brakes on an axle. Two tyres of different compound and different depth grip differently in the wet, and the car works that out for you at the least convenient moment, usually as a twitch under hard braking that gets blamed on a greasy road. Mixing radial and crossply construction on the same axle is against the law outright. Mixing two makes of radial is not, but it is worth knowing about, and it tends only to get spotted by somebody who has all four wheels in front of them and is paying attention.
Kerbs and potholes do most of the damage in KT6, and they rarely do it while you are looking. You find it later: a scuff that has gone through to the cords, a split along the shoulder, a lump in the sidewall that was not there last week. You do not drive it anywhere first, and nothing gets towed off Brighton Road. Old tyres leave Berrylands, Tolworth and KT6 with us, every time. You watch it happen in Tolworth, or at the kerb in Long Ditton. The KT6 postcode and a street in Alexandra Drive: that is enough.
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Kerb damage is the local speciality. Streets parked solid on both sides mean tight angles into small gaps, and it is the inner shoulder that takes the punishment, on the face the driver never sees. Coming to the car means all four wheels get looked at where the car lives, inner edges included, which is more than most people ever get when they drop a car off for one corner.
The front pair had four millimetres between them and a different tread pattern each side. We explained what that does under wet braking, wrote down both sizes, and left the decision with the driver instead of selling on the spot.
A lump the size of a fist in the sidewall, two days after a hard hit. That is broken cords inside the casing rather than a blemish on the outside of it, and there is no version of that tyre which is safe to keep.
Plenty of tread and sidewalls crazed all over with fine lines. Rubber ages whether the car is driven or not, and age was what condemned these, not mileage.
Radial and crossply together on one axle is. Two different makes of radial is not, so nobody will fail you for it. The two tyres will still behave differently in the wet, and the difference shows up under hard braking rather than on a gentle drive.
The better pair, always, even on a front wheel drive car. The rear tyres hold the back of the car in line. If the grip runs out at the back first the car spins, whereas at the front it simply pushes wide and slows down.
That the cords inside have snapped and rubber alone is holding the air in. It cannot be repaired and it does not settle down again. A tyre in that state is living on borrowed time, and when it lets go it does so all at once.
Regularly. Scuffed rim protector ribs, light scoring across the tread, small stones sitting in the grooves: none of that condemns a tyre. Where the casing is intact you keep your money and hear it in plain terms.
By depth, by position and by what is underneath. We are looking for exposed cords, for separation between the layers, for cracking that runs deep rather than sitting on the surface, and for anything wrong inside the casing once the tyre is off the rim.
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