Rubber has a shelf life, and it runs whether the car moves or not. The compound is full of oils and additives that keep it flexible, and those migrate out over the years. What is left goes hard and starts to craze, first as fine lines between the tread blocks and around the base of the sidewall, then as cracks deep enough to show the fabric underneath. A car with 6mm of tread can be sitting on tyres that are structurally finished.
Every tyre carries its own birth date. Look for a four digit number in an oval on the sidewall: the first two digits are the week, the last two the year. It is worth knowing because low mileage cars, which is a great many cars in a place where journeys are short, wear their tyres out by calendar rather than by mileage, and the owner has no reason to suspect it.
Parallel parking damages more tyres than potholes do. Anywhere with tight kerbside bays, York Road included, produces a steady supply of scuffed sidewalls. If it has gone too far, we bring the right size and fit it where the car is parked, in Earlsfield or anywhere else in Wandsworth, balanced and pressure-set, with no tow and no garage booking. Tight in Southside, easy in East Hill: neither stops the job. Level in East Hill, sloping in Southfields: we set the car straight first. A SW18 address in Southfields and one in Earlsfield are the same round.
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A lot of cars in SW18 do short hops and then sit for days on a permit street, which is exactly the pattern that ages rubber without wearing it. If your car falls into that description, the useful check is not the tread depth. It is the four digit date code on the sidewall and a proper look at the base of the tread blocks in daylight.
Short journeys and long periods parked age rubber faster than they wear it. Shallow crazing on an older tyre is normal. Cracks deep enough to show fabric are not, and those come off.
Spare wheels and low mileage cars are where these turn up. The tyre has never been near a kerb and it is still finished, because time did the work that miles usually do.
The lower sidewall where it meets the rim gets the least air and the most heat, and it often cracks there first. It is easy to miss because it is the part you never look at.
There is no single legal number for a car, but once a tyre is well past its first decade the rubber has usually hardened enough to matter. Condition decides it, and the date code tells you where to start looking.
On the sidewall, four digits in a small oval, sometimes only on one side of the tyre. Week first, year second, so 2519 means the twenty fifth week of 2019.
No. Fine crazing on the outer rubber is common and often harmless. What matters is depth, and whether you can see fabric at the bottom of the crack.
More so, not less. Tyres on a car that sits still age without wearing, so the tread depth keeps telling you everything is fine long after the rubber has stopped agreeing.
Normally yes, from van stock, balanced and torqued at the car. If it turns out to be sound, we say so and fit nothing.
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