How OLD are your NEW tires??

Thanks Timm.

The video is great and presents critical safety information that not a lot of people know about. It's been the subject of posts and one thread before, but I think it's worth bringing up often.

The short of it is that a lot of tire places sell tires that are so old and dry that they're extremely dangerous --- they can literally fall apart on you and cause a fatal accident.

But you can and should check to see when your tire was manufactured by reading the date code on the side of the tire. The date code is 4 digits, with the first two being the week of manufacture and the second two being the year of manufacturer. For example, I have Goodyear TripleTreds on my car. The date code says "2207", i.e., they were manufactured in the 22nd week (May) of 2007 -- just two months prior to my ordering them from TireRack.com.

It's no guarantee, but my guess is that you are more likely to get recently manufactured tires from a high volume, online seller like TireRack.com, rather than from a brick and mortar tire shop.

 

As an example of dry rot, the work truck at my hobby farm is 26 years old. Kept indoors the vast majority of its life, and mechanically in excellent shape.

The spare tire is original, it was a Firestone. I noticed last summer it kept losing air, and since I can't recall if it had ever been used, still checked it over for nails, etc. Nothing

There were many small cracks in the sidewall, however. Took the tire off, fired up the air compressor, started filling and BANG it failed pretty violently. The sidewall ripped all around

The tread looked like new, but it was obvious the tire would have been extremely dangerous if actually used on the road

 

In the movie A Christmas Story, Jean Sheppard says "My old man's spares were tires in the academic sense. They were round. They were once made of rubber."

I love that line. The spare tire in the movie was so bald and shiny that you could see a reflection.

Tom

 

On my 62 Corvair, I have vintage Allstate wide whitewall Bias tires. At least 40+ years old.
My 73 T-Bird, Firestone 721s from 1978,
I could go on..............10 collector cars, only 2 with tires newer than than 3 years old.
I think a lot of this is propaganda so people will buy new tires out of fear.

 

Backing up what Boo said earlier, here's the thread from a little while back
where this topic was also discussed:

http://priuschat.com/forums/care-maintenance-troubleshooting/50992-aged-tires-driving-hazard.html

A real eye opener.

Caveat emptor

 

Is it just me or does the date code appear to be written differently on the integrities? Can't find any 4 or 3 digits grouped together.

 

Goodyear Integrities are not manufactured. They are left over from the Stone Age.

Tom