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In the picture below, you can see a car tyres. The bands travelling around the entire circumference have depth markers indicating legal limits.

These groves are above legal limit on my car. However on my tyre the horizontal-ish tread groves across the tyre on the raised bits of rubber are pretty much gone.

Is the tyre still legal. I am assuming so?

[url width=450 height=338]http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/cc419/gotgrip777/16%20inch%20tires/DSCN6446.jpg[/url]

Not legal no. If you are tyres are worn on the inside get the tracking sorted asap.

Think once the raised bits are less than 1mm from tyre they are illegal

1.6m tread depth is the minimum across the whole tyre. anything less is illegal

They aren't worn uneven on either side.

I can't quite work out why the circumference grooves would be deeper than the cross groves. How on earth would they ever not wear out quicker!

Get a tyre depth gauge for a few quid. 1.6mm across 2/3rds of the tyre (I think)

# good advice shocker number 2 Mcphlea  :)

My question is which bit of the tyre am I supposed to measure, just the 4 groves that are vertical in the picture, or also the  groves that are horizontal too..

Put the point of the gauge in the lowest point of the tyre and the flat measure bit will be on the tyre surface = tread depth

1.6mm across the central 3/4.

So in the below picture the red bits are fine ALL the way round, but the green bits are worn flush:

[url width=450 height=338]http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r66/batch_2001/tyre.jpg[/url]

Minimum is 1.6mm around the circumference of the tyre i.e. the 4 'bands' around the tyre. It's just the middle 3/4 you need to worry about and the pattern you refer to does not need to be visible.

If they're worn to around 2mm then start planning to swap them on pay day, the remaining rubber will seemingly vaporise around this level.

Thanks that's great, its just the patter that's worn though no doubt that is an indicator to start thinking about changing them.  Will take a proper depth reading of the circumference grove later...

It'd be the safety I'd be concerned with, not the legality.

I've aquaplaned myself once and completely lost control for a couple of seconds, it's very easily done with worn tires. Fortunately I was going quite slowly so nothing serious happened.

I would say the depth on that picture is about 4-5mm so quite legal.

Pity batch doesn't have that tyre on his car  :)

found this informative article on google :

http://www.2pass.co.uk/tyres.htm#.UIksCmcatoo (http://www.2pass.co.uk/tyres.htm#.UIksCmcatoo)

Quoted from article : An easy way to check the tread depth of your tyres if they don't have wear indicators is with the use of a 20 pence coin. Place the coin in the tread and make sure the tread covers the edge as shown in the video above.

Also depends what type of driving you do. Around town tyres get eaten up fairly quickly, I usually opt for branded tyres but could only afford budget tyres last time round. Around town they're fine, it's a bit of a waste of money to go for the more expensive ones if you drive round town 90% of the time anyway (from a mate who used to be a tyre fitter).

Worked out at £55 a corner on my motor, the branded tryes are about double that.

Quite!



Indeed your words rang true and I headed down to Bathwick. It looked to me that the circumference groove was close to the limit anyway. Turns out there are 2 indicators on Bridgestones, on at 3mm and one at 1.6mm.

My tyres are over 3mm so I'll use them up a bit more (mainly motorway) and change when they dip below 3mm (or before it snows, Bridgestone ER300 are like wearing slippers on an ice rink).

Thanks all.