Second hand Tyres? .... I got a Bargain!

[Welly]

Her indoors' BMW 318 tds was running on Pirelli P6000 ''slide masters'' and I knew the rears were near the wear limiters. They had been over-inflated at some point by the previous owner and were worn in the centres.

Anyway she had a couple of ''moments'' in the car on friday where the back and swung out. Luckily the Anti Skid Control caught it in time but she cacked herself

So I was faced with 2 new tyres. The size is 225 x 50 x 16'' quite rare and expensive for a 'decent' make and normaly at least £100.00 each, I had been putting it off to be honest, what with christmas and all, and it's only a 90BHP car and it has ASC fitted.

I thought I would investigate second hand tyres (for the first time ever) as I am skint. I popped down to a place on an industrial estate and had a look at what they had. After a while, and a nice chat with the gaffer, he took me over the road to their warehouse where they had just had a delivery from Germany last week.

I rummaged through all the 225 x 50's and found a couple of beauties.......Thing is I was able to have a REALLY good look at the tyre all around it, inside it, everything. I really took my time and inspected them in fine detail, and the bloke was fine about it.

Anyway I decided to have them......2 Michelin Pilot SX MXX3's (porsche tyres) with 5.5mm of tread on them, no wear on the shoulders, fitted and balanced and water bath tested all for £45.00

I stood right with the bloke fitting them on the rims and got a good look at them rotating on the balancing machine. They rotated really nice, dead straight no bulges or uneveness, perfect! one needed 5 grammes and the other 10 grammes.

I got talking to them and they get all their stock from Germany and Sweeden. Apparently they have very strict laws on tyre tread depth and puncture repairs etc. so they end up over here.

Best of all is that the Michelin Pilot's have a very good write up, and I could not get the back end out at all, even when trying to provoke oversteer on a wet roundabout.

I thought about it afterwards and thought, even if I bought new ones after a few months they would be part worn tyres anyway. I suppose as long as you get a GOOD look at them first I can't really see the problem.

[mjb]

So how do you go about finding such a place? Yellow pages under 'Used Tyres'?

[Welly]

Just look amongst the Tyre places, look for 'part worn' etc.

I have always been sceptical about it, but now I've tried it, I would do it again for sure.

[Welly]

Here they are:


No cracks in the rubber, rim protection too:

Spot the 6 in the background

Tyre dressing 'milk' showing

[trem1]

ive used part-worn on and off for years,
cos im always skint
best advice i can give is like welton said have a good look at what they offer BEFORE the put it on the rim and if your not happy with the price or condition say "not that one thanks what else have you got" if they say they aint got no more of that size/rating say you'll come back next saturday (cos you should have enough rubber for one more week )
also try and find more than one supplier cos then you can play them off each other
as in " the one round the corner only wanted a tenner for one with more tread on it than that "
you gotta try cos its fun and you aint got nowt to lose other than a bit of time and if your not happy go to the nearest kwik-fit/ats