The punctures nobody finds are the ones with nothing sticking out. A screw picked up off a road goes in head first, and once it is in, the head sits proud by a millimetre or two and then gets worn flat by the road within a few hundred miles. What is left is a small grey disc, the same colour as the grit already packed into the grooves, sitting flush with the rubber around it. You can look straight at it twice and see nothing at all.
That is how a tyre ends up wanting air every fortnight with a driver who is quite certain there is nothing in it. The way to find one is by touch rather than by sight. Run a gloved hand slowly round the whole tread with the wheel turning a little at a time and a sheared screw catches at your fingers where your eyes went straight past it. Failing that, the tyre comes off the wheel and gets inflated in a water bath, which finds everything. It is worth being thorough about, because a flush screw is entirely repairable while it is still only a screw, and considerably less so after another month of being driven on.
A puncture found at home on a Sunday used to mean a wasted day and a Monday off. We work seven days and through the night, so the repair happens while the car is still sat where you found it in Roundwood. The wheel comes off in the Walm Lane area, not on a ramp in Harlesden. Nothing is towed out of Roundwood or the Walm Lane area; the work finishes there.
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The High Road Willesden has deliveries pulling on and off the kerb all day, and building work along the side streets puts screws into the gutter faster than anything sweeps them up. Almost all of them end up flush in a tread before anybody knows about it. If a tyre has been asking for air every couple of weeks and two people have already looked and found nothing, that is not evidence there is nothing there. It is the standard description of a sheared screw head, and it takes a hand rather than a glance to find one.
A tyre losing air every few days on a car near Willesden Green had already been checked twice by its owner. The screw was flush with the tread and only turned up when somebody ran a hand slowly round the whole circumference.
The screw that eventually came out had almost no head left, worn down level with the rubber by ordinary driving. It had been in there long enough to rust, which tells you how long that tyre had been quietly leaking.
Where nothing could be found by hand, the tyre came off the rim and went into water under pressure. A steady line of bubbles from one groove showed a second, smaller entry point that nobody would ever have spotted.
Very often, yes. A screw goes in head first and the head wears flush within a few hundred miles, so what you are looking for is a grey disc about the size of a pencil end sitting level with the rubber. It is close to invisible and it is the commonest slow puncture we attend.
By feel. With the car safely raised, or by turning the wheel a little at a time, run a gloved hand slowly across the full width and all the way round. Fingers find a flush metal head that eyes go past. Do the shoulders as well as the middle of the tread.
Usually, if it sits in the central portion of the tread and the sidewall is sound. What changes the answer is time. Left in for months it works deeper, cuts belt cords and lets water down to the steel, and a rusted belt is not something any patch can rescue.
Because the rubber grips tightly around the shank and the air has to work its way out along the thread of the screw. That is a very small path, which is why the tyre takes a fortnight to show anything and why the warning light arrives long after the screw did.
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