Earlier this month I went to replace all of my tires, the old ones seemed a little worn out. Not knowing how long they've been on there I asked the person at the tire store to quickly look at them. He reported back a few minutes later stating that they were made in.........

1995

That's right, I've been riding around most of this year with 19 year old tires. This car is just full of surprises......

 

I think that I have that one beat.


This past summer a shimmy had been driving me crazy. I could not track it down. On a hunch, I went to my local garage to have them check the tires out (they were on my cutlass when I bought her a little over a year ago).


The tires were cheetah's and after some looking up, they told me that they were made in 1983, and they all had slight bulges from the car sitting before I bought her. The tread was like new though...go figure.


Needless to say, 4 Bridgestone's later she was running fine again.

 

The tires on our 62 Jetfire were new in 1985. Still look and drive like new. No dry rot or cracking. I know it is not "correct" to drive on them but I see no reason to replace them. They drive very nice and no vibrations, even at 70MPH. I do look at them regularly but I trust them. I just don't agree with tires having an experation date if they are cared for and inspected regulary. I have never seen a tire come apart without signs first.

 

You are fooling yourself. A car driven on tires that old is an accident waiting to happen. Hopefully when the accident happens no one gets hurt.... Not even you!

 

I've seen them come apart without warning and have catastrophic results. I can see maybe stretching it a bit (12 years), but 30 years is way over the limit for something I would drive at hwy speeds.

 

Yup. Even $500 of new rubber is cheap insurance.

 

I'm not a nervous nellie, and I don't obsess about this stuff, but, for whatever it's worth, I had two sidewalls blow out this past year on my daily driver: One 225/50x16 Tiger Paw from 2005 (I'd bought the set cheap with good tread about a year before, and knew how old they were), and one 205/60x15 Pirelli snow tire from 2007 or 2008 that I had bought new that year. Both were well used, but still well within legal tread standards. The Fates were kind, and one blew while I was parked, the other while I was doing about 35, but they made me think about all of the tires on all of my cars...

I'm going to be cautious about tires over five years old, just like the guidelines advise.

- Eric

 

They recap tires that are more than 6 years old. They can even give a tire a third life. Ask anyone that works in a recap shop and they will tell you that age is the least of your worries. If this was so dangerous then the DOT would never allow recaps on old tires.

 

Tires age and dry rot due to exposure to air which slowly oxidizes them and to the simple passage of time, which slowly crystallizes the rubber. Neither of these can be prevented by care, regular inspection, or anything else.

You're comparing apples and oranges here. Tires that have been recapped have NEW rubber on them. YOUR tires are not recaps. They have 30 year-old rubber on them. The fact that tires can be recapped does not mean that yours are safe to drive on.

 

They can not recap a tire that has seperation issues of any kind. I am told that less than 10% of the tires they get have separation issues. They can recap dry cracked sidewall tires and this dry cracking is not replaced by the recap. They can even recap tires with broken wires poking out from a hole poked in them. They can even recap tires with a one inch hole poked in them. The main issue is separation on the inside. This separation is most always caused by road hazards or inflation issues or alignment issues. Separation is not caused by age.

This issue is brought up here many times and I mostly stay out of it. For some reason I opened my mouth this time. I am not saying that all old tires are safe but a 30 year old tire with less than 1000 miles on them with the correct pressures, no road damage, no dry cracking of any kind, and not stored in the direct weather does not have separation issues.

 

Also, that new rubber is glued to old rubber that has not separated yet. They do not recap all the way to the wire. They leave about 1/16 inch of old tread rubber on the tire and the new rubber is glued to that OLD rubber.

 

Fine. All this discussion about recaps is pointless. YOUR tires are not recaps. You're driving on 30-year-old rubber.

 

My point isthat separation is what causes a tire to fail. Age does not cause separation. I am not going to convince anyone and that is why I should have kept my mouth shut like I always did before. If people want to replace 1000 mile tires every 6 years that is fine with me.

 

More comments:

1. Tread separation is not the only way a tire can fail. Old tires can fail for other reasons as well.

2. Getting back to recaps for a moment, tires are not recapped because they get old. They're recapped because the tread wears out. This is usually the issue in high-mileage applications like over-the-road trucking where 50,000 or 100,000 miles per year is common. If a tire has gone through its tread in a year or two or three, then, yes, the casing is not old, and the tire is a good recap candidate, perhaps two or three times before it's finally discarded for good.

But I doubt anyone is recapping 30-year-old tire casings.



Here's an interesting article on the subject from Edmunds. Note the caption under the photo at the top of the page, which directly contradicts your assertion about the relationship between age and tread separation:

"The older a tire gets, the higher the risk of sudden and unexpected tread separation."

http://www.edmunds.com/car-care/how-...our-tires.html

 

Thats ok, my rear L60's are from the 1970's no cracks or dry rot

 

Another accident waiting to happen

 

Agreed.

 

I can not make that claim either. I can claim 10-15 years on a fairly regular basis. You miss my entire point. The part of the tire that can have separation issues is not replaced in the recap process. Yes, the older the tire the more likely it could experience failure but that is from road damage or neglect of tire pressure, not because of age itself. As far as links go, you will find way more to support your argument than mine.

 

Excessive age can also cause catastrophic sidewall failure. Such failures can lead to rapid if not instant deflation and, of course, loss of control. Excessive age also results in a hardening of the rubber compounds, including the surface tread which, again of course, can result in reduced tire grip. Replacing your tires at 6 - 8 years of age is cheap insurance imo.

 

In Europe big truck tires can get four lives, new, recut tread, remoulded and recut tread again. You could say they might get more after this as they may well be exported to developing nations or put to agricultural use.
Running tires under inflated will cause them to get hot which may promote separation, as would hard cornering, acceleration and braking.
Remoulding plants inspect tires thoroughly before recycling them, remoulded tires are perfectly legal here if they pass inspection. It may well be that old tires are reused, but like secondhand cars they are not all alike. A 5 year old tire may be rejected and a 10 year old one is fine, but it is more likely that a newer tire will be in better shape than an older one. It could be that some of the very old rubber some of us are running on is good for some time yet, but for the sake of the price of good quality new tires the consequences of tire failure both in damage to the car and possibly personal injury, not forgetting tickets for defective tires it's not worth the risk in my view.

Roger

 

I just dealt with a problem on a new set of tires I got for my truck 3 years ago. 6 months ago, I had 2 tires within a few weeks of each other develop bubbles big enough to cause my truck to shake and the tire shop warrantied them. Before Christmas, I noticed the other 2 tires were developing cracks in the tread so I took it back to the tire store to show them. Turns out Nitto issued a recall for the tires a few weeks ago for belt separation causing bubbles. Tire problems can happen any time.

 

I think a serious problem is that the tire can develop problems while still looking good.

 

Yes, but that problem applies to all of us, doesn't it?
And certainly to all of the women I dated.

- Eric