The most consequential part of fitting a tyre has nothing to do with the tyre. Inside the rim there is a machined ledge, the bead seat, and the tyre's stiff edge locks onto that ledge under pressure. That contact is the seal. There is no gasket, no sealant and nothing else involved; it is rubber pressed against clean metal and held there by the air inside. Which means the state of the metal is the whole job, and on a wheel that has spent several winters on gritted roads, the metal under the old tyre is not clean.
Aluminium corrodes into a crumbly white deposit that sits proud of the surface, and it forms exactly where you cannot see it, hidden under the tyre that is about to come off. Put a new tyre straight onto that and it cannot seat evenly. The result is not a dramatic failure, it is worse in its way: a brand new tyre that is inexplicably down by spring, and a driver who assumes they have picked up a puncture. Cleaning the seat back with a wire cup takes a couple of minutes and it is the difference between a fit that holds for years and one that starts leaking quietly in month three.
Two decisions and you are done: which tyre, and what time. After that the van comes to the car rather than the other way round, so a set can go on while it sits outside the house in South Lambeth, outside the office, or in a bay on Wandsworth Road if that suits the day better. Steep camber in Nine Elms? We move a few metres, Albert Embankment or anywhere else. Blocked drive in Lansdowne Green? Open kerb in the Wandsworth Road area? Either works.
New tyres in Vauxhall is part of our wider mobile tyre fitting across London and the home counties cover. For new tyres in Vauxhall, call 07717 389637 or get a price for your tyre.
Roads like Wandsworth Road and South Lambeth Road are through routes and get gritted hard every winter, and salt spray reaches the inside of a wheel far more easily than the outside. That is precisely where this corrosion sits: on the ledge under the old tyre, invisible until it comes off, and untroubled by any amount of washing. If you are buying a set, it is a perfectly fair question to ask whoever is fitting them. We do it as a matter of course, since the wheel is already apart at that moment and it will never be so easy again.
A wheel that looked immaculate from the outside had a thick band of corrosion right around the bead seat, invisible until the old tyre was off. It came back to bare metal before the new one went near it.
A driver had bought four tyres elsewhere and was losing air from one by March. Nothing was wrong with the tyre. The seat had never been touched and the bead had never sealed properly along one section.
A steel wheel from a car parked around Lansdowne Green had rust rather than white deposit, in the same place and with the same consequence. Preparation is preparation whatever the wheel is made of.
It is the machined ledge inside the rim that the edge of the tyre locks against under pressure, and it is the only thing making the seal. There is no gasket in a modern tyre. If that ledge is corroded or uneven, the tyre cannot seat cleanly, and no amount of pressure forces it to.
By the symptom rather than by looking, because the area is hidden once the tyre is on. A new tyre that starts losing a little air over the following months, with nothing to find in the tread and a sound valve, is very often a seat that was never cleaned before the tyre went on.
Yes, as rust rather than as white deposit, and often worse because the coating on a steel wheel is thinner. The preparation is the same either way. What differs is that corrosion on a steel wheel is usually easier to see once the tyre is off.
Usually, if it is caught while the pitting is shallow. The seat is cleaned back, checked for flatness and treated. Where corrosion has eaten deeply enough to leave the ledge pitted and uneven all round, the wheel will never seal reliably again and it is better to say so.
★★★★★ 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 Vauxhall.