Three quarters. That is the figure deciding most of these calls and it is worth understanding before anyone comes out. A car tyre may be repaired only within the central three quarters of the tread width. Take the whole width, leave out roughly an eighth at each side, and what remains is the band where a repair is permitted. That is a rule with a number attached to it, not a matter of anybody's taste.
Anything outside it is off limits, and the reason is not caution. The shoulder is where tread turns into sidewall, and that is where the casing does its bending. Every rotation flexes that region, so a plug and patch sitting there is being worked loose from the moment it goes in. The same standard limits how large the hole may be.
Repairs made properly to BS AU 159 last the remaining life of the tyre. Repairs made outside the band come back, and they come back at speed rather than on a driveway. Measure the band on your own tyre once and the geometry stops being abstract, which is also why the answer at the kerb is occasionally no.
The pressure warning light is not a puncture, it is a question. We come out in TW9, 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. Same tools in Kew as in North Sheen, same on every call. Valve in Kew, balance in North Sheen, pressures before we go. TW9 takes in North Sheen and Petersham, and we work the lot.
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Punctures here are mostly nails and screws picked up in the ordinary way, on Kew Road, in a bay near George Street, on the drive at home. Most land in the middle of the tread where they can be dealt with. The ones we cannot save are the ones that found the shoulder. That is geometry rather than opinion.
A nail close to the edge of the repairable zone on a car in Kew still counted, because the boundary is measured off the tread edges rather than judged by eye. It was reamed, plugged and patched from the inside.
That same distance the other way is a replacement, and it is a hard conversation to have on somebody's driveway. Nothing about the two holes looks different from above. Where each sits in relation to the shoulder is the whole difference.
Another puncture in a tyre already carrying a patch is allowed within limits, provided the two are not close together and the casing is sound. That gets measured rather than guessed at, and occasionally the answer is that the tyre has had its share.
Because it is the hinge of the tyre. The shoulder flexes on every rotation as load moves between tread and sidewall, and nothing bonded there stays bonded. A repair failing at the shoulder fails as a deflation rather than a slow leak.
Past a few millimetres across, the answer is a replacement. A repair fills a puncture, it does not rebuild a casing, and a large hole means cords have been cut through rather than pushed aside. It gets measured rather than estimated.
No. A string plug pushed in from outside leaves the inside of the casing uninspected and unsealed, so nobody knows whether the tyre has been run soft. It is a get-you-home measure at best, and not what the standard describes.
Many can be repaired and many cannot, and the deciding factor is usually whether it has been driven on while deflated. Those tyres let you carry on without knowing, so the casing often has more history than the driver realises.
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