Every winter the pressure warning lights come on in numbers, and a good proportion of them are not punctures at all. Air contracts as it cools, so a tyre set correctly on a mild afternoon reads noticeably lower on a cold morning, and on some cars that alone is enough to trip the warning. The first hard frost of the year produces a run of calls from people convinced they have picked something up.
The distinction is worth knowing, because the two behave quite differently. A cold weather drop affects all four tyres more or less equally, appears overnight and does not get any worse from one day to the next. A puncture affects one tyre, and that tyre keeps going down whatever the weather decides to do. So if the light comes on during a cold snap, look at all four rather than assuming. If they all look similar, it is probably temperature and they want setting back to the plate figure. If one is clearly lower than the rest, that is a leak and no amount of cold explains it away. Either way, do not simply clear the warning and carry on, and along the A23 do not go looking for the answer at speed.
Catching a flat early is worth real money. A tyre that is losing air slowly, spotted while it is still parked up in Thornton Heath, is very often repairable; the same tyre after ten miles of being driven on is scrap. A 4am Green Lane call and a noon Pollards Hill call reach the same fitter. Whether it is Norbury in rush hour or Crown Lane at midnight, we answer.
Flat tyre help in Norbury is part of our wider mobile puncture repair cover. For flat tyre help in Norbury, call 07717 389637 or send us your details for a price.
Norbury runs along the A23 with buses and commuter traffic pounding the surface all day, so the gutters collect debris and slow punctures are a regular complaint here. In winter that gets tangled up with the ordinary cold weather pressure drop and the two are easy to confuse. The rule of thumb is simple enough. All four down together is the weather. One down on its own is a leak. If it is the second, leave the car on the driveway or in the space off Green Lane and ring.
All four down by a similar margin with the warning showing. Nothing had punctured anything. They were set correctly, the light went out and the car was fine. That is the common version in December and January.
Same cold morning, same warning light, but the nearside rear was well below the other three. That was a screw rather than the weather, and the difference was visible from a couple of feet away.
He cleared the warning and set off along London Road on the assumption it was the cold. It was not. The tyre went properly in traffic, and clearing a warning is not the same thing as answering it.
Possibly. Air contracts as the temperature drops and that on its own can trigger the warning. The way to tell is to look at all four tyres. Weather affects them together, while a puncture picks on one.
Setting them back to the correct pressure is right if it is temperature. If one tyre is doing something the others are not, adding air only hides it for a day or two and it comes back at a worse moment.
On the plate in the driver's door shut, sometimes inside the fuel flap, and in the handbook. It usually gives separate front and rear figures and often a higher set again for a fully loaded car.
It can make an existing one worse. Corrosion around the rim where the tyre seats, and perished valves, both give way more readily in cold, damp, salted conditions, and both get checked when the tyre comes off.
Yes, 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and winter mornings are among our busiest hours for exactly this reason. Typical arrival is 30 to 60 minutes across SW16.
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