Hi fellow Skodians, I have a 2016 Fabia 1.2 tsi dsg and on the last 2 mot’s have been advised that I have “cracking” in between the treads of my tyres. The treads themselves are all above 4mm however these are the tyres that were on the car when I bought it from new and the mileage is 21k. There is a bit of wear on the inner fronts so had the alignment checked and that was ok. Is it worth me swapping the wheels around? 

This is one of the problems of very low mileage use.  There is cracking which shows the tyres are not in good condition, and been that way for the last two MoTs.

 

With age and lack of milage use tyres tend to go hard this means they are no longer as good at their functions as they used to be, tyres effect the vehicle's braking, steering, suspension, road holding, handling, comfort and noise.  They are a very underrated complex very important component of the car and provide the four small patches of contact with the road, all the electronic driver aids cannot overcome the physics of those four patches or lack of any of them.

 

If the tyres are the same as was on my wife's 2015 then they are Nexen N blue HD(?) which weren't the best tyres when new anyway.

 

If you were to change all the tyres to new I'm sure you'd notice the improvement.  For driving in the wet, not that it rains much in the UK, it's recommended to have at least 3mm tread depth.

 

My neighbour had a couple of Chinese tyres on his 2005 Picanto (with less than 28k-miles on it from new) and they cracked in the tread after 2 or 3 years of very little use and parked on the "drive" out in all elements and when he decided to change them he went for a set of four new tyres and what a difference it made but by this time only I was really driving the car every now and then just to check it and give it a little exercise, cars are designed to be driven not static.  

 

On a tangent have you changed the 12v battery yet?

 

Edited 6 August, 20241 yr by nta16
missing word

There is also a 'Tyres & Wheels' forum on this site were you will find lots of info, threads and posts on tyres and different posters (and opinions).  Ootohere has just put up a video on a thread there that has a middle part that could be relevant to you (from 5:27). - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufau3V2Nc7c

 

 

'Tyres & Wheels' - https://www.briskoda.net/forums/forum/213-tyres-wheels/