The legal minimum is 1.6mm, and that is a more specific number than most people realise. It has to be 1.6mm across the central three quarters of the tread, all the way round. A tyre with plenty of rubber on the outer shoulders and nothing left in the middle is illegal even though it looks passable from where you are standing. There is also a built-in check: small raised bars sunk into the grooves, and when the tread wears down level with those bars, that is 1.6mm.
Worth saying plainly, though, is that 1.6mm is the point at which you can be prosecuted, not the point at which the tyre stops working. Wet braking distances lengthen considerably below about 3mm, because the grooves no longer have the volume to move water out of the way. If a tyre has to be replaced today for other reasons, that is the moment to look at what the other three are actually measuring.
It might be a tyre that let go on the way home and is now sat on a driveway in Southfields, or one you have finally looked at properly and found worn past the limit with an early start tomorrow. An East Hill cul-de-sac or a Southfields main road, tell us which. A tight terrace in Southfields or a narrow bay on the South Circular is usually workable. The SW18 postcode and a street in Earlsfield: that is enough.
Emergency tyre replacement in Wandsworth is part of our wider mobile 24-hour emergency callout cover. For emergency tyre replacement in Wandsworth, call 07717 389637 or ask us for a quote.
Wandsworth driving is mostly short, stop-start work between the gyratory, Garratt Lane and the Common, which wears tyres in a very particular way and hides it well because the car never gets up to a speed where you would notice. Whenever one wheel is off for an emergency change, the other three get measured properly, and you get the actual figures rather than a nod.
Usually over-inflation, and it fails the legal test even though the tyre looks reasonable from the kerb. The measurement that counts is taken across the central three quarters, not at the widest point.
Those little raised ridges in the grooves are the manufacturer telling you the tyre is finished. Once the tread has worn flush with them, there is no argument to be had about depth.
Between 1.6mm and 3mm a tyre is lawful and increasingly poor at moving water. On the South Circular in heavy rain that difference is measurable in car lengths.
The wear bars in the grooves are the built-in gauge. If the tread is flush with them, you are at the limit. A twenty pence coin gives you a rough check at around 3mm.
It is legal. Wet stopping distances stretch a long way below 3mm, so the honest answer is that legal and safe are not the same word here.
In most cases yes, straight from van stock in the common car, SUV and 4x4 sizes. Read us the code off the sidewall and we will confirm before setting off.
Rarely. Tyres wear unevenly and we measure each one and tell you the numbers, so you replace what is finished rather than what is convenient to sell.
Yes, as a matter of course. It costs nothing and it stops a second callout in a fortnight for the corner nobody looked at.
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