Read the size off a front tyre and then off a rear one. On a good number of rear wheel drive saloons and the sportier 4x4s the two numbers differ, with a wider tyre at the back than at the front. That is a staggered fitment, and it changes what happens after a puncture. The familiar advice, move a good tyre to the rear and put the new one on the front, does not apply at all, because the front tyre will not fit the rear wheel.
There are knock-on effects. A staggered car cannot have its tyres rotated, so each corner wears at its own rate and the rears normally go first. There is often no spare that suits both axles, and where one is carried it tends to be a front size. Directional and asymmetric patterns narrow things further. All of which makes the repair question worth taking seriously here, because a rear that can legally be repaired saves you a pair rather than a single.
The usual routine is to pump it up, hope, and drive somewhere to be told whether it can be saved. We come to the car in SW2, take the wheel off where it stands and inspect the tyre inside and out before anybody commits to anything. The wheel comes off in Furzedown, not on a ramp in Norbury. Pressures set before we leave Furzedown, and the same on Tooting Bec Gardens.
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A wide rear tyre and a low profile do badly in a place like this. The kerbs on the streets around Streatham Park and off Mitcham Lane are high, the bays are tight, and a shallow sidewall has almost nothing between the rim and the concrete. Most of the unrepairable damage we see sits at the shoulder rather than in the tread.
A screw sat in the centre of a wide rear on a car parked near Streatham Common. It was well inside the repairable band, which on a tyre that width is a generous piece of ground. Repaired, balanced, back on, and no pair to buy.
A directional tyre had been put back on the opposite side of the car by somebody in a hurry, so the pattern was throwing water outwards the wrong way. It is not an offence and it is also pointless. We turned it round while the wheel was off.
One owner found out that the emergency wheel under the floor was a front size and the flat was at the rear. It would have bolted on, but nothing about it matched the corner it was going to.
Not on a staggered car. The rear wheel is wider and the front tyre was never made to fit it. Even where the numbers look close, stretching a narrower tyre onto a wide rim changes the shape of the tread and how it sits on the road.
Yes, on the same terms as any other. The repairable area is the central band of the tread, and on a wide tyre that band is physically large. What catches these out is the low profile, because shoulder and sidewall damage is common and none of it repairable.
Not automatically. It depends what the survivor has left. On a staggered car the rears wear faster and are usually close in age, so if the other is well down this is the sensible moment. If it is healthy, one is enough.
Read both sidewalls. The size is moulded into each one: the width, the profile and the rim diameter in that order. If the front and rear numbers differ, it is staggered. Send us both when you ring and the right tyre travels with the van.
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