part worn tyres

KTF

My second hand car came with part worn tyres. Its a struggle to stay on the road every day but I manage it somehow...

Iceweasel

EdGasket wrote: »

I have used part-worns but from a breakers where they simply take the tyre and wheel off the car. They have been very good.

I would be wary of part-worns from tyre-only places; some are imported from the continent where the legal limit is 3mm so they are pretty clapped out before you start. I also had two part worns from a tyre place that were rubbish. One turned out to have a bulge in it and the other had warped and didn't run true; complete waste of time.

Which countries are you referring to?

Most of Europe have the same rules as here - namely 1.6mm

In Austria the legal limit for winter tyres which are compulsory from November till April is 4mm.

So we get truck-loads of part-worn winters from Austria and Southern Germany/Bavaria.

JohnM5206

I bought one today, first time ever from a well known local part worn supplier. This is for a spare which was not supplied with the car. It is on a steel wheel and will sit under the rear of the car. It is a Michelin. It will be adequate in the event of a puncture to get me to safety and a repair or replacement of the main tyre. Horses for courses indeed, but better than a can of sticky goo.

Joe_Horner

AdrianC wrote: »

[...] Add in question marks over their history (why DO people remove premium tyres with 6mm tread remaining?)

In at least some cases (you only have to read around here!) because they've had a problem wih one and "only ever change a full axle cos it's safety innit", or because they've got their winter tyres on when they discover that winter tyres aren't the perfect cure to crashing in poor weather they believed and find themselves with a nearly new set of summer tyres and nothing to put them on

Apart from that, I agree to some extent that they're often not really worhwhile.

On the other hand, you may be surprised how many people - especially in rural areas - need to run a car to get to their NMW job and simply can't afford to take the "long term economics" view. If they need a tyre, they need it now, and the axle set of mid-range at "only" £150 might be a month's food budget for them.

In that case, far better one decent condition part-worn for £25 than nothing!

F_Bear

the rubber is the only part of the car making contact with the road and keeping you on it at 70mph.

with ur kids and family in the car do you really wana risk it for the price of a decent supper?

sexyshark

for the milage I do which is about 6000 miles a year part worns are false economy

Richard53

motorguy wrote: »

+1

A bloke on another forum bought tyres with 3.5mm tread, thinking he'd got a bargain until somebody pointed out it was at least 75% worn...

And don't forget the basic geometry, πr2 and all that. The closer you get to the tyre carcass, the less rubber there is per mm of tread depth, so tyres appear to wear faster the closer they get to zero.


So a tyre with 50% tread left has in fact less than 50% of its wearable rubber remaining. That before you take into account the minimum legal depth when you have to replace anyway.

Joe_Horner

sexyshark wrote: »

for the milage I do which is about 6000 miles a year part worns are false economy

Not necessarily - a lot depends on the car, the type of use and driving syle.

I've had part-worns on the back of my Pug estate for the past 14 months that the previous owner threw on to get a new MOT on it. They cost £30 for the pair and were at around 5mm at the time. I've covered 14k miles since, including motorway, country roads and some town driving (but no big-city stop / start). A lot of that mileage has been with the car heavily loaded.

There are still just under 3mm left on both tyres and I'll probably get another 4 - 5k miles before I start feeling uneasy about them, by which time they'll be down to about 2mm.

So, on each wheel, that's a rubber bill of £15 for 18 months / 18k miles. The front replacements recently cos me £46 each. If I put the same on the back they'd have to last 44k miles or 4 1/2 years to add up the same.

On a lower annual mileage new tyres would run out of age before they run out of tread!

salubrious

Part worn tyres are very much hit and miss - I don't live in a very big town, but even here we have about a dozen tyre shops that sell nothing but part worn tyres.

I'm not a huge fan of them myself - It's ok if you are a discerning enough motorist to know what you want and consequently what you are looking at, but unfortunately far too many folk are happy to slap any old crap on their cars as long as it hasn't cost them no more than £15 a corner.

I see it almost daily, with cars having different brands on each corner with a mixture of winter and summer tyres on the same axle and repairs very close to the side wall - And all with varying degrees of tyre tread left.

There is a lot of crap out there.

GolfBravo

IMHO it is buyer beware with part worn tyres - sort of the same as buying a second hand car.

I had to buy 3 tyres for my wife's C5 last month, and had a quick look at part worn tyres. Drove past a shop in Slough that "specialises in second hand tyres imported from Germany". Unfortunately what they had available is referred to in Germany as "Schrott". Some of them were in very poor condition.

On the other hand a friend recently bought a set of 2 hardly-used and relatively new Michelin Pilots for peanuts (£25 each I think).

In the end I bought 3 brand new tyres.