A directional tyre has its tread laid out as a run of arrowheads, and an arrow moulded into the sidewall telling you which way round it goes. The V shapes are drainage. As each one rolls into the contact patch, the point meets the road first and water is pushed out along the arms toward the shoulders, away from the part of the tyre that is trying to grip. Fitted the other way round, the geometry reverses. Every channel now gathers water and funnels it inward instead of throwing it clear, and the tyre that was rated well in the wet is not that tyre any more.
In the dry you would never know, which is the problem with getting it wrong. It also puts a limit on moving tyres around the car. A directional tyre can go from front to back on the same side as often as you like, and it cannot cross to the other side without coming off the rim and being turned round, which catches people out when they are trying to even up the wear. When we bring a set out, the arrows are checked against the direction each wheel actually turns before the car goes back down on the ground, and you are welcome to look at them yourself while it happens.
Most of the sets we fit go on during the working day, while nobody is using the car. An office car park in Hoxton Square, a retail bay, a space outside the house that is empty until six. A Kingsland Road cul-de-sac or a the Charles Square area main road, tell us which. A tight terrace in the Charles Square area or a narrow bay on Kingsland Road is usually workable.
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Wet roads are where any of this shows up, and there is no shortage of those between the Kingsland Road and the streets running back off it. Standing water sits in the worn troughs beside the kerb where everybody parks, so pulling out of a bay in the rain is often the first hard work a front tyre does all day. Choosing a set is a calm decision made in advance, and the fitting should be the same: the car stays where it is, the arrows get checked, and the wheels come back on balanced.
One rear tyre had been mounted backwards at some point and nobody had ever questioned it. A directional pattern looks symmetrical enough at a glance for that error to survive several years and two owners without comment.
An owner had moved the tyres side to side to even out the wear, which is sound thinking on most tyres and exactly wrong on these. The pair now on the offside were turned round on the rims and put straight back.
Four directional tyres fitted where the car was already parked near Hoxton Square, arrows checked wheel by wheel, everything balanced at the kerb and the old ones taken away with us.
It shows the direction the tyre has to turn when the car is going forwards. A directional tread only clears water properly one way round, so the arrow is not a suggestion. It usually sits alongside the word ROTATION and is moulded into both sidewalls of the tyre.
Not without taking them off the rims. Front to back on the same side is fine and is the normal way to even out wear on a directional set. Moving one across the car leaves it turning the wrong way, which is the same mistake as fitting it backwards in the first place.
Look for a V or arrowhead pattern pointing one way down the whole tread, then look on the sidewall for an arrow. Symmetrical tyres have no arrow and can go anywhere on the car. If you are not sure, read the sidewall markings out to us over the phone.
No. The balancer travels with us, so the wheel comes off, the tyre goes on, it is balanced and it goes straight back onto the car. Nothing leaves the street, which is rather the point of buying tyres this way instead of booking a morning off work.
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