Reading: Tyre Repair Controls

Fears over safety have prompted Birmingham City Council’s Trading Standards officers to call for stricter rules governing tyre repair workshops. This follows the discovery that, at a recent two-day training course, tyre repair workers performed imperfect repairs on fifty percent of the tyres supplied.

In addition, a survey by a “mystery Shopper” found that of 13 part-worn tyres, 11 were incorrectly labeled and two were unfit for use. Birmingham’s Trading Standards officers visited repair shops with 12 punctured tyres, of which four were repaired illegally.

Chris Neville, acting head of Trading Standards, stated, “anyone can set up a tyre repair business with no training, which has implications for safety.” He added that of the 60 workshop staff invited to participate in the two-day free course, only 28 attended. All attending the course passed the mystery inspections conducted by officers.

The chairman of Birmingham City Council’s public protection committee, Neil Eustace, has called for tyre repair workshops to be licensed and monitored in the manner of MoT test centres. “They should be licensed,” he said. “If they are not doing their job, then they are putting lives at risk”.

At etyres we offer a free repair service to all our customers, and we work strictly to the following standards.

The “repairable area” of a tyre is designated as that where a repair can be carried out to British Standards (currently BS AU 159f).

Because a tyre curves away from the middle of where the tyre rolls on the road, only the centre area is repairable. Sidewalls are not repairable.

The repairable area is defined as a percentage of the tyre’s “nominal” section width and thus varies by the size of the tyre. The repairable area is based on the centre line, eg. 82mm means 41mm on either side of the centre line of the tyre.

Look elsewhere on our website for a handy REPAIRABLE AREA TREAD GAUGE, which will enable you to find out if a puncture in your tyre is likely to be repairable.

Note that a tyre may not be repairable if the hole is larger than 3mm or there is other internal damage to the tyre.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 12:44 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.