Every so often a tyre comes off the wheel and the puncture is not the problem. The problem is what somebody already did to it. A stem pushed in from outside with no patch behind it, a patch stuck over an unclean liner that has lifted at one edge, or a repair placed out in the shoulder where it was never permitted. All three hold air, sometimes for years, which is precisely why nobody has questioned them.
When we find one, the honest position is that a bad repair cannot simply be repaired again on top. The area has to be cleaned back and inspected, and quite often the original damage has been made worse by whatever was forced into it. If the hole has been reamed oversize, or water has been travelling down an unsealed stem into the steel belt, the tyre has gone past the point where a proper repair is available. That is a frustrating thing to be told about a tyre that has been holding pressure perfectly well, and it is better said in a permit bay near Highbury Fields than found out at speed on the Holloway Road.
The repair takes about as long as a coffee, which is why it is worth doing at your workplace rather than anybody's workshop. A bay in an office or retail car park around Drayton Park is enough room. The wheel comes off in Drayton Park, not on a ramp in Islington. Nothing is towed out of Aberdeen Park or Drayton Park; the work finishes there.
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Highbury is quiet and leafy compared with the roads either side of it, and a lot of cars here do modest mileage and keep the same tyres for a long time. That is exactly the situation in which an old repair goes unexamined for years, because nothing ever prompts anybody to take a wheel off. If a tyre has been asking for air occasionally and nobody can find a nail, it is worth having the wheel off once rather than topping it up indefinitely.
A tyre on a car bought secondhand near Drayton Park had a stem pushed in from outside and no patch. The belt underneath had begun to rust, which is what an unsealed hole does over a winter.
A repair off Blackstock Road had been bonded onto a liner that was never properly buffed. One edge had lifted, and air had been tracking under it for months.
A patch found on a tyre near Highbury New Park sat out in the shoulder, where a repair is not allowed and where flexing was always going to peel it.
Sometimes, if the original damage was small, correctly placed and the area cleans up sound. Often not, because whatever was forced in has enlarged the hole or let water into the belt. We clean it back and look before saying either way.
Because holding air is not the test. A tyre can be airtight and structurally compromised at the same time. What we are inspecting is the casing and the liner, and both of those can be damaged while the tyre stays perfectly inflated.
Usually you would not, unless it was marked. It becomes obvious the moment the tyre comes off the rim, which is one of the reasons we take it off rather than working from the outside.
Common enough that it is worth having the tyres properly looked at when you buy one. A car can arrive with a good set of tread and a history nobody mentioned, and the inside of a tyre is where that history is written.
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