A second hand car, will have some history with it, and for the observant, the body will show evidence of any repairs. A used tyre has no such background.
Would I buy used tyres - yes, with proper care.
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Buying used wheels with tyre on.
- Thread starter vincentianpinner
- Start date
A second hand car, will have some history with it, and for the observant, the body will show evidence of any repairs. A used tyre has no such background.
Would I buy used tyres - yes, with proper care.
It's a tad tricky and it's not unknown for some used car traders (scrotes) to tamper with the system so previous activation and/or faults will not show up to the untrained eye. As always, buyer beware!
checkcar.vin is fairly reliable with their comprehensive reports and it's a service my family's car business uses if needed.
checkcar.vin is fairly reliable with their comprehensive reports and it's a service my family's car business uses if needed.
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Of course, that’s impractical. It’s just been general knowledge (for me, anyway) that when buying a previously used tyre, it’s good practice to look inside the casing. When I was testing cars, there was a secondhand tyre place near to our testing station that purchased tyres with sidewall damage from places such as kwik fit that wouldn’t repair those tyres and they then repaired the sidewall using, literally, a lump of sidewall from another tyre and some rubber compound. We had quite a few of them in for test and weirdly enough, it isn't against the law or mot rules to do that so I couldn’t fail those cars on the side wall repair. The clue for me was, many of those tyres were top brand directional tyres and they always fitted the tyre the wrong way round on the rim to hide the damage. I would fail them for being incorrectly fitted and tell the customer why they had fitted it the wrong way round. What I could also do though was issue an advisory saying 'Sidewall repair to x/x/x tyre. Advise not to exceed 30mph with this tyre' which, when the customer went back to them and complained, caused them to phone up and give all sorts of threats towards me. I told them what they could go and do to themselves. They are still in business and doing it to this day.
Always exercise extreme caution if you are offered as good as new tyres from an Indian trader. Why? I've been over there and seen how they never give up on a casing unless it's totally a write-off. I recently found this video to reinforce my statement.
I had a tool for doing that on commercial lorry tyres. It was (and still is) legal on lorry’s but not on cars or light vans. You had to make sure you didn’t go down to the cords though. My tool was something like this:
Riding on a lorry/truck and buses out there and Pakistan is like taking your life and giving it to the driver. You should see how they sew together a totally fecked tyre. Little wonder there are so many so called 'accidents' out there.
I must admit, I admire the tremendous ingenuity they show in those videos.
Drive into a wall at 30mph and see what happens??
If it’s gone off, you’d know about it. If it hadn't, the warning light will let you know if there is a fault present.
They arrived in cars, with a (I think), ten year life. That recommended life seems to have since just been extended to 'indefinate'.
The one in our Golf is now 17 years old.
A few weeks ago I passed an accident involving an old fiesta 2006.
Airbags had worked as intended.
Meh... the warning light doesn't tell you much to be honest. It'll tell you if the circuit is open or shorted - or it might tell you that the previous owner had bought one of those modules on eBay that puts the light on for the right amount of time with the ignition on...
. Takata had about the biggest safety recall in history for airbags (twice)! They used ammonium nitrate as the explosive, which goes unstable with exposure to moisture and heat. The light won't tell you much about whether it's going to work correctly.