3mm Tread on Rear Tire and Nail in It - Repair or Replace?

newbie1980

davethetaller wrote: »

Where do these 4-5mm tyres come from?

If I had a puncture at that stage of a tyres wear, it would be repaired.

these come from europe as they have to have a more tread than the uk.

AdrianC

newbie1980 wrote: »

these come from europe as they have to have a more tread than the uk.

If we're talking winter tyres, then - yes. Many European countries stop regarding winter tyres as winter tyres at 4-5mm tread.

If we're talking normal summer tyres, then no. Most EU countries have exactly the same 1.6mm minimum as the UK. Many part-worns come from the salvage trade - crashed cars being broken, broken-down cars being scrapped. Some come from trade-ins where people are upgrading to different wheels. There's not much international trade in normal summer part-worns.

bigjl

A good source of part worns used to be the Police and Ambulance service, they both had a no puncture repair policy and no reuse of part worns with tyre replaced in axles sets.

As cost cutting has become more common the policy had been relaxed.

With tyres being repaired and then matched up with an equally worn tyre to create a matched axle set.

That is why you could sometimes see LAS Zafiras and Astras driving round London with mix and match alloy wheels on occasion.

I got several sets of Michelin Pilots on my Omega that had come from the Met Traffic garage in Chadwell Heath, this was in the 90's and I don't even know if Traffic are still based there. TSG wagons used to be.

You can see containers of mixed used tyres for sale online if you have a look, they always seem to be from Germany.

Though on the very rare occasion I have fitted a used tyre in the last five years or so I have noticed the quality is not what it was.

Though I did manage to gets nice Michelin for the V50 just prior to selling it and several hardly worn Goodyear Wranglers for my Pathfinder a few years ago.

I don't see the point in fitting a part worn cheapie, as the saving is not huge IMHO. Fitted two part worns to the Clio and it took ages going through their stock before they could get a matched set, and even then they weren't a brilliant tyre and were noisy, I can't remember the make but if the car was not on its last legs they would not have gone on. But it wasn't worth putting £100 worth of tyres on it, cost for two part worns was £50.

jamesd

building_with_lego wrote: »

I'd replace. Someone on here posted graphs a while back, showing the increase in stopping distance against the depth of tyre tread, and it goes up quickly once you get around 3mm.

The test shows that stopping distance increases only a little, around 10% between 3mm and 2mm.

It also shows that someone knows how to distort graphs to magnify apparent changes by cutting off part of the scale and doesn't care to say that the testing was in heavy wet conditions nor what the speed was, I presume at least 70MPH.

In wet conditions on concrete and starting at what I assume was 70 MPH the stopping distance increased by about 3.5m, 13.5%, from 3mm to 2mm on hot rolled asphalt and by about 3.5m (about 9.7%) on smooth concrete.

For a person driving only occasionally and I assume not on a motorway but local city driving the effect would be even lower due to the lower speeds and likely choice not to drive in heavy rain.

Little reason at present to replace the tyres when cost is a significant factor since they will still have good stopping performance.

marlot

pennypincher3562 wrote: »

...The car literally does only 1000 miles per year, so I'd imagine tire wear is very slow....

My mum did only 1,000 miles or so a year.

She gave up driving and put the money she would have spent on the car - tax, insurance, repairs, tyres etc into a virtual piggy bank. She started taking taxis instead.

At the end of the first year, she had half the money left. She chose to give it to charity.

Its easy to forget just how much a car costs to keep.

But back to the original question. I'd check the date code on the tyre. I'd only repair if the car is only really used around town, and the tyre was less than six years old. Or I was planning to sell the car in the next month or so. Otherwise I'd replace.

knightstyle

I would be more worried about the AGE of the tyre, what is the date letter?
Old tyres are dangerous and all tyres degrade unless kept in the dark.

arcon5

GabbaGabbaHey wrote: »

I replace all my tyres at around 3mm - even if they don't have a nail in them!

I replace all my tyres at 5.5mm as stopping distance is more than 6mm

Joe_Horner

jamesd wrote: »

The test shows that stopping distance increases only a little, around 10% between 3mm and 2mm.

It also shows that someone knows how to distort graphs to magnify apparent changes by cutting off part of the scale and doesn't care to say that the testing was in heavy wet conditions nor what the speed was, I presume at least 70MPH.

In wet conditions on concrete and starting at what I assume was 70 MPH the stopping distance increased by about 3.5m, 13.5%, from 3mm to 2mm on hot rolled asphalt and by about 3.5m (about 9.7%) on smooth concrete.

For a person driving only occasionally and I assume not on a motorway but local city driving the effect would be even lower due to the lower speeds and likely choice not to drive in heavy rain.

Little reason at present to replace the tyres when cost is a significant factor since they will still have good stopping performance.

It also shows that a tyre on asphalt with about 2.5mm is still as good as a brand new tyre on concrete, and at the limit of 1.6mm on asphalt is still about the same as one with 4mm on concrete.

Yet no-one gets all safety-scared about driving on concrete motorways - presumably because they know perfectly well they won't scare the gubmint into buying new roads

Norman_Castle

I would compare the cost between a repair and a part worn tyre. A proportion of the cost will be for removing and refitting a tyre. Depending on the age of your current tyre you may get a younger and better tyre for little extra cost.

Rain_Shadow

MacMickster wrote: »

If you only drive 1000 miles per year yet only have 3mm tread then that suggests that the tyre itself is now far too old to be in use on a car. Rubber degrades over time.

.

knightstyle wrote: »

I would be more worried about the AGE of the tyre, what is the date letter?
Old tyres are dangerous and all tyres degrade unless kept in the dark.

There is nothing in the OP that says the tyre is old. The previous owner who fitted the tyres new, maybe a couple of years ago, could have done many thousands of miles on them. All we know is that the OP's estimated mileage is 1000 per year. That is not to say that the OP shouldn't check the age of the tyre