Before anybody talks about where the nail is, the tyre gets measured. The legal minimum here is 1.6mm, and the part people miss is where it has to be met: across the central three quarters of the tread width, and all the way round the circumference. Not at one convenient spot with a coin.
That definition exists because tyres rarely wear evenly. A car living on short local journeys and tight turns will often show three or four millimetres on the outer edge while sitting on the marker bars on the inner shoulder, and the driver cannot see it from the pavement. So the gauge goes in at several points across the width, and the lowest reading inside that central band is the one that counts.
It also tells us something the hole cannot. A tyre worn to nothing on one shoulder alone has an alignment fault behind it, and sealing the puncture without saying so leaves you buying another tyre for the same reason in a few months. The reading takes two minutes and it often changes what the right answer is.
The pressure warning light is not a puncture, it is a question. We come out in SE10, find out which of the four it is, and deal with it: a proper internal repair to BS AU 159 where the tyre allows one, a valve or sensor where that is the fault, or a replacement where the casing has gone. Whether it is Blackheath in rush hour or Blackwall Tunnel approach at midnight, we answer. On Blackwall Tunnel approach, day or night, Maze Hill included, arrival across SE10 runs 30 to 60 minutes.
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Cars around Greenwich do a great deal of low speed manoeuvring, from the setts near the town centre to the tight turnings up towards Maze Hill and the endless kerbside shuffling that parking round here demands. That kind of use wears tread across the width rather than evenly, so readings from one side of a tyre to the other are often nothing alike.
A car parked off Blackheath looked healthy from the kerb. The gauge told a different story on the inner third, and the reading below the limit was on the part of the tread nobody had ever set eyes on.
A screw in a tyre near Westcombe Park, five millimetres and even right across the width. Nothing to argue about: the wheel came off, the casing was checked, the hole was sealed to BS AU 159 and the tyre went back on.
A driver on Greenwich High Road had been told the tyre passed on the strength of one reading taken in the middle of the tread. Fine in the middle, and under the limit on the inner quarter.
Across the middle three quarters of the tread width and around the entire circumference. The outer edges sit outside the measurement, which is why a tyre can look respectable at the shoulder and still be illegal.
That is a snapshot of one day. Tyres wear fastest on the corner that is out of alignment, and a few thousand miles of local driving can take a legal tyre past the limit on one shoulder while the rest still measures well.
Not directly. Position and size decide that, and they are judged with the tyre off the rim. Depth decides whether the repair is worth having at all. You hear both answers before anything is opened up.
Usually the geometry rather than the driving. A tracking or camber fault scrubs one shoulder away while the rest of the tread looks untouched, and a new tyre fitted without correcting it will go the same way.
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