Flat tyre and no spare — what to do

1. Safety first, and it isn’t close

A tyre is replaceable. Getting this bit wrong isn’t.

• Get off the carriageway. It is better to ruin a wheel than to stop somewhere dangerous. Drive at walking pace to a lay-by, side road, service area or the hard shoulder — then stop.
• Hazards on straight away, and turn your wheels away from the road.
• Get out of the passenger side if traffic is passing, and take everyone with you.
• Stand behind a barrier and up the bank, ahead of the car rather than behind it. Never stand between your car and moving traffic, and never sit in the car on a hard shoulder.
• Leave the dog in the car unless you can keep it properly under control.

On a motorway, the orange SOS phones are roughly a mile apart and tell the operator exactly where you are, which is more use than trying to describe it. You can also ring National Highways on 0300 123 5000. If you can’t get off a live lane, or can’t get out of the car safely, that’s a 999 call — not a judgement call.

On a country lane in Nottinghamshire the problem is the opposite: nobody knows where you are. Open what3words on your phone and read the three words out. We use it most days.

2. Find out what you’ve actually got

Lift the boot floor. One of four things is under there, and which one decides everything that follows.

• A full-size spare. Increasingly rare. If it’s there and you’re somewhere safe to work, fit it — but check its pressure, because a spare that has sat for six years is often flat itself.
• A space-saver. The skinny one. Fine to fit, but read the sticker — usually 50 mph maximum and a limited distance. Not to be left on.
• A sealant kit and a compressor. The most common setup on cars built in the last fifteen years or so. See the next section.
• Absolutely nothing. Common on cars that came on run-flats, and on plenty of others where the kit was used once and never replaced.

Two things worth checking while you’re in there: whether you have a locking wheel nut key, and whether you have a jack and a wheel brace. A spare wheel is no use without either. If the key is missing, our guide on a lost locking wheel nut key covers what happens next.

3. If you have a sealant kit

These work better than their reputation suggests — on the right sort of damage.

It will probably work if

• The hole is in the tread, in the middle section, and is small — a nail or a screw.
• The tyre went down gradually rather than all at once.
• The tyre is still sitting on the rim.

It won’t work if

• The damage is in or near the sidewall. Nothing will fix that, sealant included.
• It was a blowout, or there’s a visible gash or split.
• The tyre has come off the rim, or you’ve driven on it flat.
• The canister is out of date. There’s a date on it, usually four to five years from manufacture, and old sealant separates and does nothing.

If it does work, treat it as a get-you-home: most makers say roughly 50 miles at up to 50 mph. Get the tyre sorted properly within a day, not next week.

Once you’ve used sealant, the tyre is usually scrap

This is the part nobody tells you before you press the button, and it’s worth knowing.

We don’t repair tyres that have had sealant in them. A proper puncture repair is a patch bonded to the inside of the tyre, and a patch needs a clean, dry, scuffed surface to key into. Sealant coats that whole inner surface. In our experience you can’t reliably get it all off — and a patch that doesn’t take fails later, at speed, with no warning. That’s not a risk worth taking to save the price of a tyre, so we write them off.

The sealant also gums up the pressure sensor in the wheel, which sometimes cleans up and sometimes needs replacing. And the longer it sits in there, the worse both problems get.

Whether it was repairable in the first place comes down to where the hole is and how big it is — our guide on whether a puncture can be repaired sets out the line. Worth thirty seconds before you reach for the canister.

4. If you’re on run-flats

Look at the sidewall for RSC, ROF, RFT, ZP, SSR, EMT, DSST or MOE. If any of those are there, the tyre is self-supporting and you can usually keep driving — typically around 50 miles at up to 50 mph, less if the car is loaded or it’s hot.

This is exactly what they’re for, so use it: drive gently to somewhere sensible rather than sitting on a hard shoulder waiting. Our guide on how far you can drive on a run-flat has the detail, and the run-flat guide covers what happens next, because a run-flat that’s been driven deflated almost always needs replacing.

5. If you’ve got nothing — your real options

Breakdown cover

Check whether you have it before assuming you don’t. A lot of people are covered without realising — through a packaged bank account, a credit card, their car insurance, or the manufacturer’s own assistance if the car is newish.

But be clear about what it actually gets you here, because this is where most people’s expectations and reality part company.

A patrol cannot fit a tyre you don’t have. If you’ve got a spare, they’ll put it on and you’ll be away. If you haven’t, they are not going to fix the problem at the roadside — they will tow you to a tyre shop, and usually one within a fairly small radius of where you’ve stopped.

That works perfectly well at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday morning five miles from home. It works a lot less well in the situations people actually break down in:

• Late at night or early in the morning, when the tyre shop they tow you to is shut. You and your car are now parked outside a closed garage waiting for it to open.
• Miles from home. The car gets dropped somewhere local to the breakdown, not local to you — so you’ve then got to get yourself home, and come back for it another day.
• When the shop doesn’t have your size. Being towed somewhere that then has to order the tyre in costs you another day.

A mobile tyre fitter

The tyre comes to the car. It’s fitted where you are — the roadside, a lay-by, your drive, the work car park — and you drive away on it, sorted, in one visit. No tow, no car left at a closed garage, no second trip to collect it.

That’s the whole argument for it, and it’s strongest exactly where breakdown cover is weakest: at night, at weekends, and a long way from home.

The thing to ask on the phone is whether they actually have your size with them or are collecting it, because that’s the difference between an hour and half a day.

Recovery to a garage

Sometimes the right answer, particularly if the wheel is damaged as well as the tyre, or the car needs more than a tyre. Ring the garage first and check they have the size and can take the car today.

6. What to have ready when you ring

Whoever you call, having this to hand turns a ten-minute conversation into a two-minute one:

• Your registration. It tells us the car, and usually the tyre size, without you having to crouch down in the wet.
• Where you are. A what3words, a dropped pin, or a road name and a landmark.
• What happened. Slow puncture, nail, kerb, blowout — it changes what we bring.
• How many tyres. Kerbing a wheel often does two on the same side.
• Whether you’re somewhere safe. Say so if you’re not. It changes the order we do things in.

What not to do

• Don’t drive on it. Past a few car lengths at walking pace, you’re turning a tyre into a tyre and a wheel — and sometimes a brake line, a wheel arch liner or a wishbone too. It’s the single most expensive mistake available here.
• Don’t keep pumping it up and pressing on. If it went down once it will go down again, usually somewhere worse.
• Don’t jack the car on a soft verge, a slope, or a hard shoulder. Jacks sink and slip. This is how people get hurt.
• Don’t assume it needs replacing. A nail in the middle of the tread, in a tyre that hasn’t been driven flat, can often be properly repaired for a fraction of the price — see can a punctured tyre be repaired.

Afterwards: don’t be here again

Once it’s sorted, spend twenty minutes and forty pounds making this a non-event next time.

• Buy a sealant kit and a 12 V compressor if your car has neither. Put them in the boot and check the date every couple of years — worth having for the times you have to move, just remember that using it costs you the tyre.
• If you used the kit, replace it. An empty canister under the boot floor is worse than none, because you’ll be counting on it.
• Consider a spare, and ring a breaker’s yard for it. Plenty of cars have the well for a spare even though one was never supplied. See below — this is much cheaper than most people expect.
• Check your pressures monthly, including the spare if you have one. Most punctures announce themselves days before they strand you.

Getting hold of a spare without paying dealer prices

This is the tip worth taking away from the whole page, because the price difference is not small.

A spare wheel from a main dealer is an eye-watering number, and it usually arrives as a bare wheel — you then buy a tyre to go on it. Ring a car breaker’s yard instead. A used wheel from a scrapped car of the same model is a fraction of the price, and it almost always comes with a tyre already fitted, which is most of the value.

Ring two or three local yards, or search the online parts networks that let breakers list their stock — you put your registration in and it shows you who has what. Ask for a spare wheel and tyre rather than an alloy, because a plain steel wheel or a space-saver is cheaper still and does the job perfectly well for something that lives under the boot floor.

What to check before you hand over the money

• That it’s off the same model. Give them your registration. Stud pattern, centre bore and offset all have to match, and they vary even within one manufacturer’s range.
• The tyre’s date code. Find DOT on the sidewall and read the last four digits — week and year. A wheel from a fifteen-year-old car may carry a fifteen-year-old tyre, which is no use to anybody. Our guide on sidewall markings explains how to read it.
• The tyre size, roughly. A full-size spare should ideally match what’s on the car. If you’re on a four-wheel-drive, this matters a great deal more — see replacing tyres on a 4x4.
• Condition of the rim. Buckles and heavy kerbing are worth walking away from. Surface rust on a steel wheel is cosmetic and fine.
• That you get a jack and a brace too. Ask — they’re often sitting in the same boot and cost very little. A spare wheel with nothing to lift the car with is decoration.

Check the pressure when you get it home, then again every few months. A spare that’s flat when you need it is the oldest joke in motoring.

What we do about it

This is most of our work. We carry stock, we come to the car rather than the other way round, and we’ll tell you on the phone whether it’s a repair or a replacement before anyone commits to anything. See emergency tyre replacement if you’re stuck now, or mobile tyre fitting if it can wait until tomorrow.