A tyre can be legal, look almost new and still be past it. There is a four digit code stamped on the sidewall inside an oval: the first two digits are the week, the last two the year. Rubber is a chemical thing, and it goes on curing and drying whether the car moves or not, so a set that has sat on a low mileage car for nine or ten years will have hardened and started to craze even with most of its tread left. You feel it as a car that never quite grips in the cold and wet.
East Finchley is full of exactly that car: the second vehicle, the one used for the school run and the weekly shop, three thousand miles a year, tread depth fine. When we come out to a house near Cherry Tree Wood or a drive off East End Road, the age code gets read alongside the tread depth, because on those cars age is usually what is actually finished. We fit budget through to premium, balance every wheel at the address and take the old set with us.
A tyre bought in a hurry is usually the wrong tyre. Wet grip, noise and how long it will last are all printed on the label, and the difference between a premium and a budget casing shows up in the rain long before it shows up in the tread depth. Cars, SUVs and 4x4s, in Cherry Tree Wood, Fortis Green and everywhere between. Steep camber in The Bishops Avenue? We move a few metres, East End Road or anywhere else. Blocked drive in Fortis Green? Open kerb in Cherry Tree Wood? Either works. The N2 postcode and a street in Manor Park: that is enough.
New tyres in East Finchley is part of our wider mobile tyre fitting across London and the home counties cover. For new tyres in East Finchley, call 07717 389637 or send us your details for a price.
N2 is squeezed between the A1 and the A1000, so the cars here tend to do short local trips and then occasionally a fast run out. That combination is the worst case for an aged tyre, because it spends most of its life cold and then gets asked to work hard. Fitting at the address means we can look at all four plus the spare in daylight without anyone booking time off.
A rarely used car near Manor Park had six millimetres left and fine cracking right along the base of the tread blocks. The date codes read 2015. Tread depth was never going to be the thing that condemned it.
A driver on Falloden Way asked us to check the spare while we were there. It had been under the boot floor since the car was built and was both flat and badly aged. Better to find that on the drive than on the A1.
A car off Fortis Green had a newer pair on the front and originals on the rear. Mixing grip levels front to rear like that changes how the car behaves in the wet, so we brought the rear pair up to match.
Find the oval stamp on the sidewall with four digits in it. 2419 means the twenty fourth week of 2019. If your sidewall has an older three digit format, the tyre is well past worth keeping.
For an ordinary car, no, the legal test is tread depth and condition. Practically, once a tyre is around ten years old most people should be replacing it regardless of how much tread is left.
Fine cracks in the grooves and along the sidewall flex line, and rubber that feels hard rather than slightly tacky. It often still looks perfectly presentable from a few feet away, which is the problem.
Yes, and we will read every date code including the spare. It takes a couple of minutes and it is the one check almost nobody does themselves.
★★★★★ 4.9 from 151 verified Google reviews.
Read all 151 reviews on Google →Prefer a callback? Send your details for a new tyres price in East Finchley.