Look into the bottom of the grooves on an older tyre and you will often see fine cracks running along the base of the tread blocks. On most tyres that is cosmetic. There are several millimetres of rubber and a steel belt package underneath, and surface crazing has gone nowhere near either.
It stops being cosmetic when the cracks deepen enough to reach the belt. Water gets down them, the steel begins to rust, and the bond between the belt and the rubber above starts to let go. A tyre in that condition weeps air across a wide area rather than through a single hole, which is why the pressure keeps falling and nothing turns up in the tread. There is no repair for it.
Being clear about that cuts both ways. Plenty of tyres arrive with crazing somebody has already condemned them for, and they go straight back on because the cracks are shallow and the tyre holds air. What decides it is depth, whether pressure is actually being lost, and what the inner liner looks like once the wheel is apart.
A puncture found at home on a Sunday used to mean a wasted day and a Monday off. It does not need to. We work seven days and through the night, so the repair happens while the car is still sat where you found it in West Putney. The routine is the same whatever the hour: wheel off, tyre off the rim, damage inspected from the inside, internal repair to BS AU 159 where the tyre qualifies, rebalanced and back on with the pressure set. Where it does not qualify, we say so plainly and fit a replacement from stock.
Puncture repair in Putney is part of our wider puncture repair across London and the home counties cover. For puncture repair in Putney, call 07717 389637 or send us your details for a price.
A lot of cars around West Putney and up towards the Heath cover very few miles and spend most of the week parked, which ages the rubber in the grooves while leaving the tread depth untouched. If one tyre is quietly going soft and nothing has ever been found in it, the base of the tread blocks is worth a proper look.
A tyre off a car near Putney Heath bubbled from three separate points along the groove base once it went into water. Nothing had punctured it. The crown had crazed through as far as the belt and the tyre was breathing out through its tread.
A low-mileage car in West Putney had been told all four wanted replacing on the strength of the crazing. Three were fine. The cracks were shallow, the pressures had been steady for months, and nothing was showing at the belt underneath.
A tyre from a car near Roehampton had cracks deep enough to hold water and brown staining working along the belt beneath them. Once the steel corrodes the tread is separating from the casing, and no patch anywhere addresses that.
Usually not on their own. Fine crazing on the surface of the rubber is a normal sign of age and heat and has not reached anything structural. The questions are how deep it goes and whether the tyre is holding pressure.
No. A repair works by filling a channel and sealing a defined hole from the inside. A crack has no channel and no single hole, and where it has reached the belt the damage is spread across the crown. There is nothing to patch.
That is the point at which it goes into water with the wheel off, so the leak has to show itself. It is usually the groove base, the bead seat where tyre meets rim, or the valve. All three look like a phantom puncture.
There is no fixed age. Heat, sunlight and long spells parked do it faster than mileage does, so a car that makes short journeys and then stands for a week ages its tyres without wearing them.
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