Leave a stretched tyre on the car and a pothole will settle the argument for you. Stretching means putting a tyre narrower than the rim onto that rim anyway, so the sidewalls are pulled outwards at an angle rather than standing more or less upright, and the bead is held on its seat by less than it was meant to have. Some people like the look of it. What it actually does is make the bead easy to unseat and leave the rim edge as the first thing that meets a kerb.
Every tyre size has a range of rim widths it is built to sit on, and it is a narrow range. Outside it the sidewall carries load in a direction nobody engineered for, and when it goes it does not go slowly. The bead comes off the seat and the tyre is flat in a second. If we are called to one of these, the tyre that goes on will be a section that actually suits the wheel, and you will hear the reasoning before anything is unbolted. The price is settled first, so a recommendation is never a surprise on the bill.
6mm across the central three-quarters is illegal, and the penalty is per tyre. Where a tyre is genuinely past it, we bring the correct size out to the car in Marshalswick and fit it where it stands, balanced, valve checked, pressures set. School run in Fleetville or 1am in Jersey Farm, we answer the same. Christmas Day in City Centre, any day in Marshalswick: the line is open.
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The older streets here are narrow enough that people park with a wheel up on the kerb, and a rim takes that badly when there is not much tyre standing between the metal and the stone. Add the potholes that come out of every wet winter, then the fast miles on the A1081 and the M1, and a tyre that is not properly matched to its wheel gets found out quickly.
Flat in seconds, no puncture anywhere in the tyre, and fresh damage along the rim edge. It had been stretched onto a wheel far too wide for it and was only ever waiting for a hole in the road.
A second hand car bought with all four tyres too narrow for the wheels. Nothing had failed yet. We changed the front pair, which had already cracked at the bead, and went through the numbers on the sidewall with the owner.
Nine in the evening, a car needed at seven the next morning and a tyre nothing was going to save. Correct section off the van, seated, balanced, torqued to the handbook figure, and the driver went to bed.
It will look less aggressive than a stretch and it will fill the arch differently. What it will also do is sit on the seat properly and stay there. That is the trade, and it is worth hearing about before a failure rather than after one.
It is usually stamped on the back of the spoke face or inside the barrel, something along the lines of 8J. Tell us that plus the size written on the tyre, and we can say straight away whether the two belong together.
If both were stretched, then yes, eventually. If only one has actually failed and the other is sound and the same age, one will do for now. Either way the pair on an axle should match so grip stays even.
A full size spare will, if it has tread and pressure in it. A space saver is a get you somewhere tyre with a speed limit printed on the sticker, and it is not something to leave on a car doing motorway miles.
All the major names, budget through to premium. On an unusual fitment we will tell you on the phone what can be got hold of and how quickly, rather than turning up and finding out in front of you.
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