Originally Posted by flynn

Slightly off the original subject, but both wheel alignment and wheel balance affect wear and so does having tyres fitted properly in the first place. A lot of tyre-fitters aren't as well trained as they should be.

I recently had a new tyre fitted after getting a puncture when the Xtrail had done only 3000 miles. I used the biggest UK internet tyre company, Etyres, who send out mobile fitters but when I drove with the new tyre there was an obvious vibration. Had I been driving round on rough old tyres for a while I might not have noticed straight away.

When I checked I saw they'd fitted the tyre with the red dot aligned with the valve. In case you don't know, most new tyres come with two painted dots. The red dot is the "uniformity mark" and marks the point of maximum runout. That has to be matched with the uninformity mark on the wheel, the low spot, to ensure perfect roundness. The yellow dot is the "weight mark", the light spot of the tyre. If there isn't a uniformity mark on the wheel the yellow dot is usually lined up with the valve as that's usually the heaviest part of the wheel. By muddling the two dots Etyres fitted the tyre with the red dot opposite to where it should be and so increased the runout on the wheel rather than compensated for it.

What surprised me was that when I phoned to get them back to fix it they obviously didn't know what the different dots were for and nor did the fitter who came back. This is a big company so there must be thousands out there with wrongly fitted tyres.