A tyre pressure warning light is a blunt instrument. It does not know you have a puncture, it does not always tell you which wheel, and on most cars it has said nothing at all until the pressure is already well below where it belongs. So if that light has come up along Colney Hatch Lane and the car feels slightly odd through the wheel, treat it as a flat tyre until you have looked, rather than as a sensor having a moment.
The more useful half of this is what the light does next. Put air into a tyre with a nail in it and the warning goes out for a while, because the system measures pressure and pressure has come back up. Nothing has been repaired. A light going off is not the car telling you it is fine, it is the car telling you there is enough air in there for now. It runs the other way too. On a car that reads pressure indirectly through the wheel speed sensors, a genuinely soft tyre can light nothing until you are moving and sometimes not even then. Either way, when you suspect a flat around Friern Barnet the answer is to stop somewhere you can safely get out and look at the tyre with your own eyes.
The instinct is to nurse it to a garage, and it is usually the wrong one. Car parks near North Middlesex Golf Club, side streets, driveways and the hard shoulder are all normal ground for us. On Colney Hatch Lane, day or night, Whetstone included, arrival across N11 runs 30 to 60 minutes. We are out on Woodhouse Road at 2am and in New Southgate at 2pm.
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The roads through Friern Barnet feed straight onto the North Circular, and the A406 is the last place you want a soft tyre to finally let go. If a warning comes up on Friern Barnet Road or Colney Hatch Lane, take it seriously, get across onto a residential street where you can open a door without traffic passing it, and stop there. We come to the car in N11 and you have lost nothing except half an hour.
The warning came up in slow traffic and he carried on, reasoning that the car felt normal. It felt normal for another mile and then it did not. Pulling over to look when the light first appears takes two minutes and is nearly always worth those two minutes.
A slow puncture topped up at a forecourt, warning cleared, problem apparently solved. It was flat again by the following morning. We found the screw, and because the car had not been driven on it flat, the tyre was still saveable.
An older car with no direct sensors gave no light whatsoever. She noticed the steering pulling to one side coming off the North Circular and stopped in a side street to look. Instinct through the wheel beat the dashboard on that occasion.
Crouch down and look at it from the front, comparing it against the tyre on the other side of the car. A tyre can be a long way down and still look inflated from standing height. If the two look different to each other, it is not the sensor playing up.
Once correct pressure is in, yes, although some cars want a short drive or a reset before it clears. If it comes back a day later then air is going somewhere and the tyre needs looking at properly rather than pumping up again.
It can be disturbed if the work is done carelessly, which is one reason a tin of sealant is a poor idea. The stuff coats the inside of the tyre and the sensor along with it. Taking the tyre off the rim means the sensor gets handled rather than filled.
No. A flat tyre destroys itself within a few hundred yards, and the A406 slip roads are not somewhere anybody wants to be stationary. Get onto a residential street as soon as you safely can and leave the car standing there for us.
Usually 30 to 60 minutes. That is the van reaching you, and the wheel itself is quick once we are on the spot. If traffic means it will be longer than that you hear it on the phone rather than getting an optimistic guess.
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