Rubber does not only wear out, it ages. Standing in daylight and open air for years, the compound gradually loses what keeps it flexible and the surface crazes into a network of fine cracks. The trade calls it perishing and most drivers call it dry rot, and it appears first in the bottom of the tread grooves and along the part of the sidewall that flexes. It has nothing whatever to do with how much tread is left. A tyre with plenty of depth and eight years behind it can be perished right through.
That becomes the deciding fact the moment somebody wants a puncture repaired, because a patch has to bond to the inner liner and a bond is only ever as good as the surface underneath it. Where the liner is crazed, the adhesive grips rubber that is already coming apart, and the cracks carry on spreading beneath the patch afterwards. It holds for a while. Then it stops holding, usually without warning and usually long enough after the repair that nobody connects the two. So a proper inspection means flexing the rubber around the injury and looking at the inside of the tyre, not simply locating the nail. If the area is hard and crazed, the honest answer is a replacement.
Roadworks, building sites and anywhere heavy traffic turns are where punctures come from. Round here that tends to mean Camberwell Road and the parking either side of it. Anywhere in SE17, at the kerb, on a drive or in a car park. School run in Walworth or 1am in Aylesbury Estate, we answer the same. Christmas Day in Burgess Park, any day in East Street: the line is open.
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A lot of cars around SE17 sit in the same resident bay for a fortnight between short local journeys, which puts plenty of years on a set of tyres and very few miles. It is the one situation where the tread depth flatters the tyre badly. If your car spends most of its life parked on the Aylesbury or on a street off Walworth Road and only goes out occasionally, it is worth looking into the groove bottoms for crazing rather than trusting the depth, because that is the measure that will decide whether a puncture can be repaired at all.
A tyre off a car near Camberwell Road had a nail in an ideal position and comfortable depth all round. The liner was crazed across the area a patch had to cover, so there was nothing sound to stick it to.
Fine crazing showed along the base of the main grooves once the tyre was cleaned off. From above the tread looked entirely respectable, which is how perishing usually gets missed until somebody has the wheel off.
A car that had covered very little in nine years still had most of its original tread. The rubber had hardened to the point where a thumbnail barely marked it, and that is a tyre at the end of its life whatever the depth says.
Because depth and condition are two different things. Tread depth measures wear, and perishing measures age. The rubber stiffens and crazes over years whether the car is driven or not, and a hard, cracked tyre grips poorly and cannot be repaired even though it looks barely used.
A pattern of fine cracks, like crazing on old paint, usually in the bottom of the tread grooves and around the flex line of the sidewall. The rubber also feels hard rather than slightly yielding, and a thumbnail pressed into it leaves less of a mark than it should.
Because the repair depends on adhesion. A patch is bonded to the inner liner and relies on that rubber staying whole. Crazed rubber is already splitting at a small scale, so the bond has an unreliable foundation and the cracking continues underneath it once the tyre is back in service.
It matters a great deal, and not in the way most people expect. A car that sits still for weeks at a time ages its tyres without wearing them, so the set that looks almost new is often the set closest to needing replacing. Low mileage is not the same thing as low use.
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