A directional tyre is moulded to turn one way only. The tread is a V or an arrow pattern designed to throw water outward as it rolls, and there is a rotation arrow on the sidewall telling you which way that is. On a car wearing directional tyres, each tyre belongs to the side of the car it is currently on, and a tyre taken off for a repair has to go back the way it came off.
That sounds obvious and it goes wrong constantly, usually when a wheel is moved to a different corner during a roadside change and then never moved back. A directional tyre running backwards does not fail and does not make a noise. It simply stops doing the thing the pattern was cut for, which is moving water out from beneath the tread, so its wet performance falls away and it wears unevenly on top of that. When we take a tyre off a rim for a repair, the wheel goes back onto the corner it came from and the arrow is checked before the nuts go anywhere near it. If a wheel has been swapped across the car at some point in its life, this is the visit to put that right.
You are stood looking at a screw head in the tread and wondering whether to pull it out. We come to it, on Sutherland Avenue or on a driveway, take the wheel off and find out whether the damage is inside the repairable area. Old tyres leave Little Venice, Elgin Avenue and W9 with us, every time. You watch it happen in Warwick Avenue, or at the kerb in Sutherland Avenue. W9 takes in Maida Hill and Maida Vale, and we work the lot.
Puncture repair in Maida Vale is part of our wider puncture repair cover. For puncture repair in Maida Vale, call 07717 389637 or ask us for a quote.
Around the mansion block avenues of W9 the bays are tight and cars often sit for days between short journeys, which is why a wheel moved to the wrong corner during one roadside change can stay there a very long time without anybody noticing. A directional tyre gives you no warning at all that it is on backwards. If your car came with V-pattern tread and a wheel has been off at any point, it is worth a crouch beside each one to check the arrows point forward, and worth mentioning when you ring so we can look while we are there.
A puncture on a car near Little Venice was repaired with the wheel going straight back to the corner it came from. On a directional set that is not a detail. It is the difference between a tyre that works in the rain and one that does not.
A wheel taken from the boot during an earlier roadside change had ended up on the opposite side of the car and simply stayed there. The arrow had been pointing backwards for months, and nothing about the car had complained.
On any directional set the rotation mark gets read before the wheel goes back on and again before the car comes down off the jack. It takes a moment and it removes the whole question from the job.
There will be an arrow moulded into the sidewall, usually beside the word ROTATION, and the tread pattern will look like a V pointing the same way. If that arrow is there, the tyre has a correct direction of travel and therefore belongs on one particular side of the car.
It has to go back on the same side, which in practice means the same corner unless the tyre is taken off the rim and turned around. We put it back where it came from, which keeps the direction correct and leaves the wear pattern where it had already settled.
Nothing dramatic and nothing you would hear. The tread is working against its own design, so it clears less water and grips less well in the wet, and the block edges wear at an angle they were never shaped for. It is a quiet loss rather than an obvious fault.
Yes, and that is the proper fix once one has ended up on the wrong side. The tyre comes off the wheel, goes back on facing the other way and is rebalanced afterwards. It needs the same equipment a repair does, so it happens beside the car in the same visit.
★★★★★ 4.9 from 151 verified Google reviews.
Read all 151 reviews on Google →Prefer a callback? Send your details for a puncture repair price in Maida Vale.