Read the characters stamped after the size on your sidewall: a two or three digit figure, then a single letter. The figure is the load index, which corresponds to a weight one tyre is rated to carry, and the letter is the speed the casing is built to sustain while carrying it. Neither figure is marketing. Together they are the maker's statement of what that tyre can survive.
Some cars need more than a standard casing, and those tyres are marked XL or with the word reinforced. Heavier estates and most SUVs sit near the top of what an ordinary casing will take, and the reinforced version has extra plies and a stiffer bead to cope.
Take something a rating short and nothing happens on the day. The tyre carries the car perfectly well at town speeds. What has changed is the margin, because a casing working above its designed load runs hotter, and heat turns a small weakness into a burst. A tyre fitted below specification does not fail in a car park. It fails on a fast road on a warm afternoon with the boot full.
A blowout on Richmond Road does not leave you with many options, and the two obvious ones are both bad: sit and wait for a recovery truck, or limp somewhere on a shredded tyre and lose the wheel as well. A tight terrace in Strawberry Hill or a narrow bay on London Road is usually workable. Steep camber in St Margarets? We move a few metres, Whitton or anywhere else.
Burst tyre replacement in Twickenham is part of our wider mobile 24-hour emergency callout cover. For burst tyre replacement in Twickenham, call 07717 389637 or send us your details for a price.
Drivers here do a great many short local miles and then, every so often, a loaded run out along the A316 Chertsey Road at speed. Tyres that have coped quietly for months meet their real design limits on those trips rather than in the crawl along Heath Road. If something on your car is a rating short, that is the afternoon it says so.
A car near Whitton had three tyres to specification and one that was not, fitted somewhere in a hurry after a puncture years earlier. Nothing was wrong with the tyre as a tyre. It was not built to carry that corner of that car.
Weight is the difference between a margin and no margin. The same car on the same tyres behaves quite differently with four people and a full boot on a hot day, and that is when a casing already at its limit finds out about it.
The figures are on the plate in the door shut and on the sidewall of whatever is fitted now. Read both out on the phone and the tyre that comes to you is right. It takes a minute and it removes the commonest route to being under specification.
Yes, and it does no harm. A higher load index or a faster speed rating costs a little ride comfort on some cars and nothing else. Going the other way is the direction that matters, and it is the direction that saves money.
It happens, usually with good intentions, when the correct tyre is not in stock and somebody wants to get a driver moving. The tyre mounts, the car drives away and nobody mentions it again. Which is why the numbers are worth reading yourself.
A load or speed rating below the manufacturer's figure can be recorded, and mismatched ratings across an axle certainly get looked at. But a test happens once a year and a burst does not book itself in, so that is not the reason to care.
The common ones, yes, alongside standard fitments in budget, mid-range and premium. If yours is an unusual size you hear that at the start of the call along with a realistic time, rather than after somebody has driven out to you.
★★★★★ 4.9 from 151 verified Google reviews.
Read all 151 reviews on Google →Prefer a callback? Send your details for a burst tyre replacement price in Twickenham.