Hit a Pothole? The Car Repair Signs to Check Right Away

You know the sound. A bang, a jolt through the steering wheel, and then that horrible few seconds where you wonder how much that just cost you.

London roads are covered in potholes, and East Ham is no different. Winter rain gets into small cracks, freezes, expands, and pops the surface open. By spring, half of Newham is driving round craters.

The frustrating part is that pothole damage often hides. The car feels fine for the rest of the journey, so you forget about it, and three weeks later a tyre lets go on the A13 or your alignment has quietly eaten a set of tyres.

This guide walks you through what to check in the first ten minutes, what to watch for over the next few days, and how to tell the difference between “book it in now” and “mention it at the next service”.

The first ten minutes

Pull over somewhere safe first. Do not stop in a live lane or on a blind bend. Get into a side road, a car park or a layby, put your hazards on, and switch the engine off.

Then do a slow walk round the car and look at four things.

1. The tyre sidewalls. The sidewall is the flat part of the tyre facing outwards, not the tread on the bottom. Run your eye and your hand along it and look for:

• A bulge or blister, like a small egg pushing out of the rubber
• A cut, split or gouge
• A tyre that is obviously flat or going down

A bulge means the cords inside the tyre have snapped and only the thin outer rubber is holding the air in. That tyre can blow out with no warning. It cannot be repaired and it is not safe to drive on. It is also an instant MOT failure.

2. The alloys. Look at the rim edge where it meets the tyre. A dent, a flat spot, a kink or a crack all mean the wheel took the hit. A small scuff is cosmetic. A visible dent in the rim is not, because it stops the tyre from sealing properly and the wheel will no longer spin true.

3. The ground under the car. Walk round and look for fresh drips or a wet patch. Clear water is usually just the air conditioning and is nothing to worry about. Oily black, red, or brown fluid is not. Neither is a strong petrol or diesel smell.

4. The car’s stance. Stand at the front and then the back and look along the car. If one corner is sitting noticeably lower than the others, a spring or a strut may have given way.

5. Roll forward a few metres. With your window down, listen for scraping, grinding or a rhythmic thumping. If anything is rubbing or dragging, stop again.

If everything looks and sounds normal, you can usually drive on gently. But keep reading, because most pothole damage does not show up on day one.

The signs that show up over the next few days

This is where the real damage hides. Potholes rarely break something outright. They knock things out of line, and the car then wears itself out over the following weeks.

Watch for these five.

1. The steering pulls to one side

You loosen your grip on a straight, flat road and the car drifts left or right. Or the steering wheel is no longer centred when you are going straight ahead.

A pothole knocks the tracking out very easily, which is the angle the wheels point at. It can also bend a suspension arm or damage a wheel bearing. Our guide on why a car pulls to one side runs through all the likely causes and how a garage tells them apart, but after a pothole, alignment is the first suspect.

Check your tyre pressures first, because a soft tyre causes the same feeling and is free to fix. If the pressures are right and it still pulls, get the tracking checked.

2. A new knock over bumps

A single “clonk” or “knock” every time you go over a speed bump, a drain cover or a rough patch, usually at low speed.

That is the sound of something in the suspension moving when it should not. It is often a drop link, a bush or a top mount, and it will only get worse. Our page on a knocking noise when driving over speed bumps explains what each different noise tends to mean.

3. Vibration through the wheel at 50 to 70mph

The car is smooth around town, but the steering wheel starts to shake or buzz once you get up to speed, then often settles again if you go faster or slower.

That pattern almost always means a wheel is out of balance or slightly buckled. A pothole can knock a balance weight off, or bend the rim just enough that you cannot see it but the wheel can feel it. If the vibration comes through the seat and the floor rather than the steering wheel, the problem is more likely at the back.

4. Uneven tyre wear

Look at the tread across the width of each front tyre. If the inside edge or the outside edge is wearing down far faster than the middle, your alignment is out and it is scrubbing rubber off every mile you drive.

This is the expensive one, because bad alignment can ruin a decent pair of tyres in a couple of thousand miles. A tracking adjustment costs a fraction of what new tyres cost.

5. The car sits lower on one corner

Park on level ground and look along the car from the front and the back. A corner that has dropped points to a broken coil spring or a collapsed strut. You may also notice the ride has gone crashy and bouncy on that side.

Book a car repair now, or wait until the next service?

Use this table to work out how urgent it is.

The simple rule: anything to do with tyres, brakes, steering or a fluid leak is a “now” job. Anything to do with comfort, noise or slow wear can wait a few days, but not a few months.

If the car is not safe to drive

Do not risk it. A blown tyre or a collapsed suspension arm at 50mph is a far bigger problem than a recovery call.

Stay behind a barrier if you are on a fast road, keep everyone out of the car, and call for help. We run 24/7 breakdown recovery across East London and Essex, so we can collect the car and bring it straight to the workshop rather than leaving you stuck at the roadside waiting for a third party.

If you have a spare wheel and you are somewhere genuinely safe to change it, that is fine. If you only have a tyre sealant kit, be aware that it will not fix a sidewall bulge or a split, and it will not fix a bent rim.

How long will I be without the car?

This is the question everyone asks, so here is the honest answer for the common pothole jobs.

• Tyre replacement: usually well under an hour, and often while you wait
• Wheel balancing and tracking: normally the same morning or afternoon
• Suspension repairs: typically 2 to 4 hours of work once we have the parts
• Alloy wheel repair or replacement: depends on whether the wheel can be straightened or needs ordering in

Most pothole damage is a same-day job if we can get the parts. Our full breakdown of how long a car repair takes covers the other common jobs, and we will always tell you the realistic timing before you agree to anything.

Making a pothole claim to the council

You can ask the council to pay for the repair. Plenty of people do not bother, which is a shame, because a decent claim takes about twenty minutes to put together.

What to do at the scene

If it is safe, and only if it is safe, take these before you leave:

1. Photos of the pothole itself, from a couple of angles.
2. Something for scale in the shot. A shoe, a bottle or a coin next to the hole shows how deep and wide it is far better than a photo of the hole on its own.
3. A photo showing where you are. Get a street sign, a house number or a shop front in frame so the location cannot be argued about.
4. Photos of the damage to your car, including the tyre or wheel.
5. A note of the date, time and exact location. Your phone will store this with the photos anyway, which helps.

Then, back at home

Report the pothole. This matters even if you never claim, and it strengthens your case if you do. The quickest way is the government’s report a pothole service, which takes your postcode and sends you to the right authority. Most roads around East Ham are looked after by Newham Council, but the big red routes such as the A13 and the North Circular are managed by Transport for London, so the postcode check saves you sending it to the wrong place.

Keep every piece of paper. The repair invoice is the most important one, because your claim is for the actual cost. Keep the recovery receipt and any tyre receipt too. An itemised invoice from a garage carries far more weight than a rough figure.

Send your claim to the right authority. Newham Council handles claims through its insurance team, and you will normally be asked to complete a claim form and attach your evidence. Include your photos, the invoice, the date, time and location, and a short, factual description of what happened.

Be realistic about the outcome

Councils do not have to pay automatically. Under road maintenance law they can defend a claim if they can show they had a reasonable system of inspecting and repairing that road, and that they did not know about the pothole in time.

That is why your evidence matters so much. Claims tend to succeed when the pothole is clearly deep, clearly dangerous, and had already been reported by someone before you hit it. If your first claim is turned down, you can ask them for their inspection and repair records for that road, which sometimes changes the answer.

Do not delay the repair while you wait for a decision. Fix the car, keep the invoice, and claim afterwards.

What we check after a pothole

Bring the car in, and we will do a proper look rather than a quick glance in the car park.

1. Tyres, including the sidewalls on both the inside and outside faces, which is where damage is easiest to miss.
2. Wheels, checked on the balancer so we can see whether a rim is buckled rather than guessing.
3. Tracking and alignment, measured properly and adjusted back to the manufacturer’s figures.
4. Suspension, including springs, shock absorbers, drop links, bushes, ball joints and top mounts.
5. Steering, including track rod ends and the rack itself.
6. Brakes, pipes and hoses, because a hard impact can damage them too.
7. A road test, so we can feel what you have been feeling.

We will tell you plainly what needs doing now, what can wait, and what is fine. If it is only a tracking adjustment, we will say so.

You can read more about what the work involves on our suspension repair in East Ham page.

Get it checked before it costs you more

Pothole damage is one of those jobs where waiting is always more expensive. Bad alignment ruins tyres. A damaged tyre risks a blowout. A knocking drop link eventually chews through something bigger.

We are an RAC-approved garage on Lawrence Road in East Ham, with over 20 years of experience across all makes, and particular expertise in Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. We are open Monday to Saturday, 09:00 to 18:00.

Call us on 020 4539 0131, book online, or drop in at 1 Lawrence Road, London E6 1JN.

Quick questions

Can a tyre bulge be repaired? No. A bulge means the internal cords have broken and there is no safe way to fix that. The tyre has to be replaced.

Is it worth getting a wheel straightened or should I buy a new one? It depends on the damage. A small dent in a steel or alloy rim can often be straightened. A crack or a heavy kink means replacement. We will tell you which one you are looking at.

I hit the pothole weeks ago, and the car feels fine. Should I still get it checked? If you have no symptoms at all, mention it at your next service and ask for a tracking check. Alignment problems are easy to miss until you see the tyre wear.

Does hitting a pothole affect my MOT? It can. A tyre bulge, a cut sidewall, a cracked wheel, a broken spring or excessive play in a suspension joint are all MOT failures.

Will claiming from the council affect my insurance? Claiming against the council is separate from your own insurance policy, so it does not normally count as a claim on your record. If the damage is large enough that you want to go through your own insurer instead, that would be a normal claim and could affect your premium.