TireSmoke.org

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897

This takes about 10 minutes, but is cool & teaches you how to decipher the age code on your tires. Great swap meet tool!!!

Good info.
I knew tires were dated, I just couldn't remember the WWYY (week,week,year,year) code.
I wonder if all tires (like ATV and motorcycle tires) are date coded.

I can't understand why the RMA would not want expiration dates on tires. Having them would mean everyone would have to buy tires more often and therefore more tires would be sold which means I could get a bigger bonus.

I suspect that interview was "edited" down to show those parts.

Also the warehouse for the lawsuit had all vans and SUVs in it - vehicles that are topheavy by nature and prone to flipping - which can happen if the tire is blown out for any reason including debris in the road. If we're going to write a bunch of laws then maybe we should have a law against top heavy vehicles like that.

I've been saying for years you should not run on tires more than 5 years old.

I'm guessing underinflation had a lot to do with the tire failures, esp tread separations.

I need some more opinions on this. I am looking for van tires. I thought I was just going to put a couple of new ones on the front as those are showing cracks and wear. The rears look nice. Turns out they are the same age, 9 years old. I hate spending $170 a tire on a vehicle that I don’t plan to keep for more than about 10-15K highway miles. There are some used sets on the market. Before I go look, how old is too old? MostMint says 5. The video says 6. I know I have run some ancient tires over the years and never had a concern or a problem. Who here is still not afraid of old tires?

How old are your current tires? My wife’s 2005 Saabaru has 17K miles, half of them on winter tires. The summer tires were manufactured in 2004. Would you replace tires with 9K miles and stored in a dark closet for half their life just because they are almost 6 years old? I am sure degradation is not a simple time dependent process so there is no clear expiration date, but it does have me thinking.

I wouldn't necessarily scrap tires that I've owned since new simply because they were old.

I had a situation a few months back where I found some "new" (read: unused) tires, but they were already 5+ years old. They were pretty cheap compared to buying new tires at the store, but I elected to pass on them, partly because of their age.

The front tires on my Chevelle were probably purchased around 1998. They have, at most, 20k miles on them. I have no worries about running them, as I know their history and have yet to see any visible cracking or dry rotting.

Contradictory? I guess so. I'm willing to use my own old tires, but not someone else's.

-Dave

I don't know that I have ever worried about a tire's age on a commercial vehicle. I am around plenty of commercial vehicles, trailers included, and we never worry about how old the tire is. A bunch of this is due to the fact that we have a ton of tires on the road at any given time, and it is not economically feasible to replace a tire that is just old. These tires are subject to severe load, heat, and worst of all, customers. Occaisionally we will have a tire have a blow out, but surprisingly, it happens only a handful of times throughout a year.
My personal opinion is if you are not testing the rating of the tire, it should be good. The question is what does testing the rating mean. If you are just driving a car back and forth to town, at no speed, I would run a tire until it was bald. If I was, for instance, driving from Alaska to the lower 48 with all of my worldly posessions in a trailer, through what could be potentially life threatening situations, and didn't feel like fixing a flat, I would invest the small amount of money in tires, and use the fact that it has "nearly new" tires on it as a sales pitch when I sold the van. Hope this helps.

GM

As usual, it's a combination of a lot of factors besides age. The real threat is tread separation, not blowouts, and visual inspection doesn't really tell you much. For aging, heat (followed by exygen exposure) is the biggest issue and thus isn't as problematic up in Alaska. There isn't a lot of great data to support the specific 6 year number, just some general consensus.

If you want all the study info, here you go:

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/staticfiles/DO ... 080907.pdf

Thanks for the opinions and information - very helpful!

Tim

Need opinions on truck tires... I need to buy 4 tires for my 2005 Chevy Trailblazer. I don't plan on buying top of the line tires, although I don't know what those would be. I am after a 60,000 to 70,000 mile tire that is quiet. Maybe that is top of the line.

Anybody have any brand recommendations? Thanks.
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I think a lot of the problem is the rubber itself. I've looked at tires only a couple years old to see it's "flaking". In years past a tire would need to be 20 years old to look like that!

Same thing with my power tool cords - a few years old & they're cracked!

EPA? Corporate profits driven by bean counters? Built in obsolescence? You tell me.

[quote="johnsons63"]Need opinions on truck tires... I need to buy 4 tires for my 2005 Chevy Trailblazer. I don't plan on buying top of the line tires, although I don't know what those would be. I am after a 60,000 to 70,000 mile tire that is quiet. Maybe that is top of the line.

Anybody have any brand recommendations? Thanks.

I put some General Grabber HTS's on my Trailblazer and I like 'em well enough. If you don't mind, I have a couple of suggestions that might help you even more. I've used Tirerack.com do do my tire research and I like it a lot. They have all the specs and owner evaluations so that you can sift through the brands and sizes and types of tires. The other website that has helped me a lot is TrailVoy.com. They have a great bunch of guys who are very helpful with Trailblazer questions. Hope this helps.

I think that you might be asking a lot to get 60k miles out of a tire on a big truck like that. I've heard people like General, but I think if you get over 45k miles out of them (any tire), you'd be doing well.

Btw, how old were the tires (what's the date). Just curious.

-BP