Running a car is costly but some attempts to save money on repairs and maintenance just don’t make sense. A recent survey by pressure group (pun intended) TyreSafe has shown that buying part-worn tyres can be expensive in more ways than one.
TyreSafe is one of the UK’s leading tyre safety organisations, dedicated to raising awareness about the dangers associated with defective or illegal tyres. Their team bought 50 random part-worn tyres from dealers and from Ebay, then had them examined by an independent tyre expert.
For a start, only one of the fifty tyres bought was sold legally, ie: by a trader observing the relevant legislation, as described here by Which?
Of more concern to drivers maybe was the finding that over a third of the tyres were found to contain potentially dangerous forms of damage or non-compliance, including one tyre which still contained a nail penetrating 5cm through the tread in a manner which was likely to result in a blowout. Other serious problems with the part-worn tyres included dangerous and unsafe repairs, exposed cords, bead damage and evidence of runflat damage.
Even if you are fortunate enough to get a safe part-worn tyre, are you actually saving any money? More often than not the answer is NO. TyreSafe measured the tread depth of the sample tyres, calculated a £-per-usable-millimetre-of-tread figure (based on the legal minimum of 1.6mm) and compared these to similar new tyres of the same specification.
Obviously the new tyres were more expensive to buy (not always though!) but had the full 8mm tread depth. However in more than half of the tyres examined, it was better value to buy brand new tyres. In one case the part-worn tyres were three times more expensive per mm of tread than the new tyre:
205/55 R16 tyre
Part-worn tyre with 4mm tread: £43.10 = £17.96 per usable mm of tread
New tyre: £37.72 = £5.89 per usable mm of tread
So when buying part-worn tyres it turns out you have a 1 in 3 chance of buying a dodgy tyre, and a 50:50 chance of getting a raw deal anyway and paying more in the long run!
This is something all drivers should bear in mind before they buy potentially-lethal part-worn tyres. Far better to seek out affordable new tyres like those we sell here at Triggs!