Driving long distance with one of four tyres advisory

I might be driving a long journey next weekend but my MOT has shown that one of my tyres outer edge (front wheel drive) is 2.7mm. The other front is 3.1mm.

They both need replacing but I was wondering how foolish it would be to drive a few hours on the M6 next weekend?

Thanks

You’ve got a week to get them replaced, why is this even a question?

Replace them.

In the dry there is no real difference. If it’s wet you increase the risk of losing control. I’d replace them. It needs to happen anyway, might as well be this week.

A new tyre has 8mm of tread, the legal minimum is 1.6mm.  So you’ve taken approx 5mm off since you bought the tyres and have 1 – 1.5mm in hand so so speak in terms of legality. Driving on them next week will be exactly like driving on them last week

Unless theres something pretty wrong with the car cuasing increased wear that 5mm of wear would have taken 10-20,000 miles. How far are you planning to drive at the weekend. 1mm of wear would be a somewhere between 2000 and 4000 miles on front tyres

If it’s an edge thats worn whats the tread like on the rest of the tyre – whats causing that edge wear  – are the tyres inflated properly? – is there a problem with the tracking? Solve that maybe

My view.

Why wait? They will need replacing anyway so just get it done asap.

Safety first.

We have had some huge downpours.

A summer downpour , speed , and water lying on the road not a good combination and aquaplaning is not nice!

At 30mph on a wet road, a car with brand new tyres will come to a stop in 25.9 metres. The same car travelling in the same conditions with tyres with a tread depth of just 3mm would come to a stop in 35 metres. That’s 35% further, despite the tyres still being perfectly legal. When the tyres reach the minimum of 1.6mm of tread, the stopping distance increases to 43 metres. That’s almost double the stopping distance of the new tyres!

Surpirised that some are saying change , at what point would they change?

The probability of aqua plaining will be much higher , and if I did lots of motorway driving I would change but if it’s a one off drive sensible and leave gaps

the legal minimum is 1.6mm.

Oh, I didn’t realise it was that little! Yeah, I’ve moderated my view, (sorry) towards the just be sensible and change them soon.

Outer edge 2.7- what’s the rest of it like? it has to be 1.6 over the central 3/4 of the tyre so sounds fine to me.

Why wait? They will need replacing anyway so just get it done asap.

Next weekend is still June, so because some people get paid at the end of the month and tyres can be a quite pricey? No idea if that’s the OP’s reasoning but one possibility. Weird size that takes ages to get hold of could be another

Anyway, they are no worse now than they were last week. Get them done as soon as you can but no major stress for another week or so, if it was damaged it would have been a fail.

If there was an accident, say in the rain and involved your stopping distance, and if your tyres were checked as a result, and if your insurance company decided to be tough, you could find yourself on the wrong side of a decision (at best) because you had been advised to change your tyres.

Or maybe the legal limit is black and white. I dunno.

Really depends how long the trip is. For “a few hours on the M6” (in summer) you are chucking very legal tyres in landfill. What is the remaining tread depth in the mid section as that is doing the work under wet braking?

Out of interest, if the MOT hadn’t flagged them as an advisory, what would you have done? Did you check them before putting into MOT? Would you have checked them before the journey?

if your insurance company decided to be tough, you could find yourself on the wrong side of a decision (at best).

Really how does that work when the car and tyres are meeting all legal road requirements?

If you drive into the back of someone it’s your fault regardless. Thats less likely to happen on brand new tyres than it is on ones with 3mm of tread , but there are loads of variables. There are massive differences in stopping distances between brands of tyre. The type of car you drive influences stopping distance. The driver influences stopping distance

So are you saying insurance companies will on pay out if yoiu drive a high performance light weight sports car on brand new tyres ? Really ?

At what depth does tread become an advisory? Or is it because they are different depths l and r?

I did edit it, because really I am no expert.

Or maybe the legal limit is black and white. I dunno.

If there was involvement in a serious rta, I’m saying I don’t know how seriously if at all an advisory tyre change would be taken. So I wouldn’t risk it for that biscuit.

At what depth does tread become an advisory? Or is it because they are different depths l and r?

Tester’s discretion I thought. Under 1.6mm is a fail, somewhere near that the tester ‘advises’ that they may need changed soon but are not yet illegal. Differences L/R or F/R don’t matter (although I ran a winter and a summer, which was the spare, on the front for a couple of weeks and was very disconcerting under braking!)

Quite a few ‘ifs’ really…but technically your legal, hence it was an advisory not a failure.

Perhaps it’s just an incentive to drive sensibly, stick to speed limits (or maybe even slower) leave suitable gaps, don’t tailgate or hurl the car into corners at speed, or brake late for things, you know all the things I’m sure you do by default anyway.

And then get some new tyres on payday?

I’d replace them at the end of summer.

2.7mm? On the outside edge, that’s loads.
Unless you want to send a perfectly good tyre for recycling? That’s pretty wasteful.

No that won’t affect insurance. It’s a legal tyre by a long way.

Old tyres, sure change them. Partly worn tyres no. Unless they feel a bit ropey in the wet.

I’d replace them.

One tiny clip of another car will wipe out any savings

One massive downpour and getting unlucky and things could be much worse

Thanks all. Visually and to touch one of them is nearly as bad as my old trainers. I’ve had the car since 2018 but only average 2000 miles annually.

Thanks again. I’ve managed to book replacements on Tuesday.

https://michelinmedia.com/the-truth-about-worn-tires/

This is worth a read.

Whilst the vested-interest tyre replacement shops love to tell you to change  the tyres long before the legal 1.6mm limit, guess what – they have a vested interest in that. Because they sell more tyres.

400 MILLION tyres  are scrapped (and most go into landfill – or just tossed to the side of the road) each year unnecessarily.

Now, it does in part depend on how good / bad / ugly/ totally shite the tyres are in the 1st place.  But… assuming you’ve got good tyres and not cheapo plasticy Chinese garbage, maybe it’s unnecessary to change before the legal limit.

if your insurance company decided to be tough, you could find yourself on the wrong side of a decision (at best).

Really how does that work when the car and tyres are meeting all legal road requirements?

To me a MOT advisory is ‘just to let you know, your tyres are quite low and will need doing soon’ and no more, no less.

I personally don’t overdo tyres, I spend extra for the best I can afford (Crossclimates at £100 a corner fwiw) and even then will be looking to change around 3mm. Even £100 a corner is cheap compared to the day you can’t stop and as I slide into the baby robin’s face I probably wouldn’t be thinking ‘at least I got a tenner’s worth extra wear out of the tyres’

But YMMV (literally) and 2.7mm in summer and on probably dry roads isn’t certain death by any means.

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That’s wasteful.

If the tyres have 1.6mm on them, they are legal, and that’s that.

(In fact if you did got to court, even below 1.6mm, it can sometimes be shown to have no material effect on the outcome of an incident- e.g. if dry, or the road covered in solid frozen ice (see case  when 4 club cyclists were killed when hit by a car that crossed the road.  3 Bald tyres… shown in court to jot have mattered as the road was covered in ice, so tread makes no difference in that circumstance.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/driver-involved-crash-killed-four-2318555.amp

Now, if they are shit plasticy nasty Chinese tyres, I’d probably have changed them to something decent long ago irrespective of the tread remaining.

Given the state of some of tyres I see on cars here in Italy I really wouldn’t worry.

Some of them are like slicks they’re so worn.

For summer I wouldn’t bother. If the road is dry more rubber means more mechanical grip, that’s why race cars run slick tyres in the dry.

Basically you’ve now got a race car, well in one corner at least 😁

But I’d look at getting it changed before Autumn and the rain. Although if you’re getting all season tyres, they may be cheaper now as there’s generally less demand for them in the summer. So that saving may offset the cost of replacing them earlier.

I’d be more worried about old tyres than partially worn tyres.

my MOT has shown that one of my tyres outer edge (front wheel drive) is 2.7mm. The other front is 3.1mm.

And as been pointed out, the legal minimum across the tread is 1.6mm. It was part of my job to check tread depth on tyres of any car I was picking up and driving, anywhere around 1.6mm was perfectly acceptable even if I was driving it several hundred miles.
What wasn’t acceptable was an MOT that ran out within a couple of days – there had to be a minimum of about a month IIRC, on a just in case of a breakdown or other unavoidable hold up.

My car had two advisables on its recent MoT, one was a repairable nail in the tread on one front tyre, the other was an unrepairable nail in a rear tyre. The rear tyres were the original OEM Goodyears that were on the rear when I bought the car, the fronts are the Michelin CC2’s I had fitted a couple of years ago, so I had the fronts put on the rear and the puncture fixed, and a pair of Continental AllSeason Contact 2’s put on the front. Now I’m doing half the miles I’ve been doing for the last few years, I’ve got tyres each end that’ll last me for quite a bit of time now, through the worst of whatever winter we’re likely to get.

Cost me £326 for the pair, plus fitting and the puncture fixed, but the CC2’s were more expensive, I think, and the Conti’s are the latest version, so all’s golden.

there was an accident, say in the rain and involved your stopping distance, and if your tyres were checked as a result, and if your insurance company decided to be tough, you could find yourself on the wrong side of a decision (at best) because you had been advised to change your tyres.

Or maybe the legal limit is black and white. I dunno.

I love the shit people make up about not being insured!  The MOT guy is basically warning you not to wait till next years MOT before getting them replaced (or looking at them properly again!).  If they were properly dodgy today it would have been a fail.

edges of tyres (outside 12.5% each side) don’t have a legal limit for tread anyway (no idea where the MOT station measured yours) – the limit only applies across the centre 75% of the tyre.

I’d be driving it.

Isn’t this a drop off at Kwik fit scenario.

Why wait?

Because they’re bloody expensive.

An advisory is just that.  3mm of tread left in June, changing them is crackers.  In November, perhaps.

Cougar

Full Member

Why wait?

Because they’re bloody expensive.

An advisory is just that. 3mm of tread left in June, changing them is crackers. In November, perhaps.

Would seem great value though if you had a crash where stopping sooner would have prevented it!

Also I’m sorry to open a can of worms but the new tyres should ideally go on the back axle, with the rear tyres moved to the front… Especially if the rear ones are old

I’ve had the car since 2018 but only average 2000 miles annually.

Based on that I would not even think about changing them until 12 months time.

More grip in the dry with 2mm of tread than 8mm of tread
The tread blocks don’t squirm and distort as much.
Leave it till October then buy some cross climate tyres.
MOT testing station looking for something to write down to show due diligence.

…one of my tyres outer edge (front wheel drive) is 2.7mm. The other front is 3.1mm.

Depends how outer edge it is, but the outer 1/8 of a car’s tyre tread width can legally be bald (as can the inner 1/8). Advisories are at the testers discretion, but a tracking fault can cause a problem quite quickly, so sort the tracking if needed.

Michelin have some tyres that are designed to work well at 1.6mm, which says something about the quality of a tyre

That minibus that takes you from airport parking to the terminal? 1mm tread, legally. As are the lorries and buses surrounding you as you use the roads.

Some new tyres come with 5.5mm of tread, so you could still be only half way through the legal life of the tyre and they are practically new especially as the measurements will be at the most worn part of the tyre.

Or the car has been driven with incorrect tyre pressures or alignment out so odd wear has happened and they may need looking at. As mot doesn’t check for alignment unless it’s visably out, but then you’ll likely have other broblems anyway.

Adviory is to nudge you that someone wants looking at but isn’t a safety issue atm, well before you need. A lot people won’t get a car looked at other than when it needs an mot and may be get it serviced at the same time.

Adviory doesn’t mean it Must be rectified before the next mot, you could have an Adviory that isn’t an mot fail that doesn’t get repaid for consecutive mots.

2.7mm is still plenty and the advisory is telling you it will need to be replaced in the future. As you only do 2k miles per annum I’d be cancelling the appointment and rebook for a years time at the earliest.

I personally don’t overdo tyres, I spend extra for the best I can afford (Crossclimates at £100 a corner fwiw) and even then will be looking to change around 3mm.

I tried to find data on this and couldn’t . Crossclimates are an all round compromise tyre, so ‘possibly’ could be worse at braking in the summer than a good summer tyre

I would happen to guess that the people who did the MOT advisory just happen to sell tyres too

I tried to find data on this and couldn’t . Crossclimates are an all round compromise tyre, so ‘possibly’ could be worse at braking in the summer than a good summer tyre

And that “worse” will still be better than the best summer tire on cold damp winter day….. Or snow or ice or standing water

Better any time the road surface is below 7c…..

But your right they are worse under warm wet weather braking (but not nearly as bad as full winters) I’ll continue using them though. They are the right tire for our climate.

If your on the stock tires of an average euro box they are probably eco models (for emissions fudging)  or an oem version of a real branded tire in which case the all season will be at it on every front.

To the op. I’d take the trip no worries. I’d look to change my tires in October for all seasons* of some flavour.

*Unpopular opinion Should be called UK standard tires