Before anyone discusses repairing a tyre it is worth knowing what shape that tyre is in, and the most useful thing it can tell you is how it has worn. A tyre being scrubbed sideways because the tracking is out does not wear evenly. It wears a wedge, thick on one side of the tread and thin on the other, and the thin side is very often the inner edge that faces under the car where nobody has any reason to look.
Run a palm across the tread from one shoulder to the other, then back the other way. If it feels smooth in one direction and like the teeth of a saw in the other, that tyre has been dragged rather than rolled. Finding it changes the answer to the repair question completely. A nail in the middle of a tyre with an even five millimetres across the tread is a repair. The same nail in a tyre that measures healthy in the centre and almost nothing on the inner shoulder is not, because that tyre is finished whether the nail is in it or not. So we look at the wear before we talk about the puncture.
A slow puncture is the one that costs people money, because it gets ignored. Down five psi by Friday, topped up at a garage, down again by Tuesday, and after a fortnight of that the sidewall has been flexing under-inflated the whole time and the casing is finished. It happens on Dalston Lane or on your own drive, and the wheel is rebalanced before it goes back. We are out on Balls Pond Road at 2am and in Kingsland at 2pm. The De Beauvoir phone and the Stoke Newington phone ring the same fitter, any hour. The E8 postcode and a street in Balls Pond: that is enough.
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The streets running from Dalston Lane toward the Stoke Newington edge are narrow, permit only and parked to the last inch, which means a great deal of kerb contact at low speed. That is the commonest way tracking gets knocked out, and the tyres pay for it quietly over the next few thousand miles. Because we work where the car already stands, reading the wear on all four while a wheel is off costs nothing at all, and it is often the difference between buying one tyre now and buying two more by the spring.
A car parked on a permit street off Balls Pond Road called us out for a nail. Both front tyres were feathered and nearly bald on the inner shoulders, which nobody had seen because that face points inward under the car.
The puncture itself was a straightforward one, right in the middle of the tread. Repairing it would have bought a few weeks on a tyre already at its limit on one side, so we said as much before doing anything.
Where one front has worn to a wedge, the other has usually done the same thing in mirror image. Checking the second tyre takes a minute and it tends to decide whether you are buying one tyre or two.
Because a repair is only worth making on a tyre with useful life still in it. If one shoulder has scrubbed away to nothing, the tyre is close to finished regardless of the nail. We would rather tell you that than take money for a patch you throw away a month later.
Turn the steering onto full lock so the inner face of the front tyre swings into view, then run a hand across the tread in both directions. Wear that is much heavier on one shoulder, or a tread that feels sharp one way and smooth the other, means the geometry is out.
No. Alignment needs the car on a rig with all four wheels measured against each other, so that is a garage job. What we can do is show you the wear, tell you which corner is causing it and get the tyre sorted, so the new rubber is not being eaten before you book it in.
Kerbs, mostly. One firm hit while parking is enough to move a track rod slightly, and after that the tyre is being dragged very gently sideways for every mile you cover. Potholes and tired suspension bushes do the same thing more slowly and less obviously.
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