Buying Used Tyres

uk-tyler

I buy used tyres already on the rims from the scrap yard.
Ask to see the car they came off, if it looks like it was cared for and not crashed then go for it.
I used to own a Rover, a lot of them are driven by elderly gents and end up in the scrappy because of head gasket failure.
I was paying £20 for a matching pair with good tread and never had any problems.

birkee

spaceboy wrote: »

Again, when you buy a used car do you fit brand new tyres to it right away?

No....but that's not the same as buying second hand tyres.
Why were they removed from the original vehicle if they are still O.K?

spaceboy

birkee wrote: »

No....but that's not the same as buying second hand tyres.
Why were they removed from the original vehicle if they are still O.K?

People change to bigger alloys, cars get written off.

birkee

spaceboy wrote: »

People change to bigger alloys, cars get written off.

Then don't they usually sell the wheels and tyres together?
'Written off'......could be worse than kerbing!

mikey72

Most part worn tyres come from europe, as they're worn out. Minimum limit is 3mm, (4mm for winter tyres in the Czech Republic) most get changed before then, most of the part worns sold in the uk are listed as 4mm.
They'd lose millions if we ever change our minimum tread requirement.

spaceboy

birkee wrote: »

Then don't they usually sell the wheels and tyres together?
'Written off'......could be worse than kerbing!

Unlikely. How?

2sides2everystory

spaceboy wrote: »

When you buy a used car do you stick new tyres on it right away?

When you buy a used car, do you know what you are looking for?

When you buy a used car, do you take it for granted that you can safely exceed say 30mph and that the brakes will not fail sometime during the next week when you need to stop smartish?

When you buy a used car privately, you know that generally those with more money to spend on cars than you are most likely to have grown tired of it rather than had a problem with it. You need to be quite cute to ensure that this is the only type of used car that you ever buy.

Contrast this with buying "used tyres" with no vehicle attached. Why on earth would anyone grow tired of a tyre to the extent they'd take it off and replace it before it was fully used down towards someone's well rehearsed idea of a safety limit? No doubt there are a few who would do it e.g the swap to alloy wheels merchants, but then those types might also be the ones who like to drive faster. Do you really want their cast offs? More likely however that these tyres do mostly come from cars written off in accidents and impact energies in write-offs are of course frequently much higher than slow speed kerbing. Chancing your arm or your life and others on unknown used tyres, unless you are a cute tyre expert, is surely plain stupid unless you are never going to drive much over say 50 mph?

How many posters here advocating the benefits of buying used tyres can put a sensible paragraph together that reminds MSE'ers what faults they would be looking for in order not to buy an unsafe used tyre?

spaceboy

Well for me the important things to look for are cracks in the sidewalls, scrapes on the sidewalls and check the DOT code to see how old they are.

If all those things seem fine I don't see why you'd have any problems with them. I wouldn't bother with less than 5mm tread though.

harveybobbles

birkee wrote: »

Why were they removed from the original vehicle if they are still O.K?

We get our tyres from Germany where they have different laws.

If you are involved in a crash, you have to change all the tyres on the car. Even if you replaced all 4 last week. So them tyres then get sold over here. They are pressure tested and perfect.

I know someone who replaces a PAIR of tyres if they get a puncture on ONE tyre. This is only cos they dont want to have a puncture repaired tyre on their car.

Also, as most cars these days have stuff like 17/18 inch tyres it makes financial sense to put a pair of part worns on for less than the price of one brand new tyre.

ie I can sell a decent Michelin 225 45 17 with 5mm on for about 30/35 quid.

A 205 55 16 Bridgestone is about 25 quid...

jase1

spaceboy wrote: »

Unlikely. How?

I'm not sure whether you mean it's unlikely the car was written off, or unlikely the tyre would have been damaged in a crash.

The former is arguable, but the latter -- are you seriously saying that knowledge that a tyre had been on a car that had been in a smash wouldn't put you off?

As for the comment about tyres coming from people who upgrade to alloys etc -- the number of tyres that come from sources like this is tiny. The majority are either imports (the vast majority of which are 4mm and thus a false economy) or from scrapped cars.

Tyres from scrapped cars fall into two categories: tyres from older cars that reach end of life (probably safe but typically narrower/higher profile tyres which are cheap to buy anyway and thus a false economy to be buying used most of the time), and wider/lower profile tyres from newer cars that have probably been written off (which represent a bigger saving but the source is unsafe because why would a newish car meet the crusher?).

Yes, some s/h tyres may represent a bargain and be quite safe, but every time I look at this side of things I conclude that most of them are a waste of time, and sifting through the rubbish to get to the occasional bargain isn't worth the effort.