Tires  By  scooter12 (Read 7,463 times)

The only way to fully see if a tire is good properly is to dismount the tire and check the casing from the inside however you need to have the training and experience to know what you are looking for.

5 year old tires that have been sitting in warehouses and never been used before "look good" are being sold as new tires however history shows that they fail regularly killing people despite the highly misleading good looks.

The "if it looks good" mentality is what is killing people.

Do you have any proof of this ?

In other words: you have no proof of any sort whatsoever, and are simply bloviating.

I guess Jarlaxle has never seen a dry rotted tire. Strange, you must not get out much...

My advice comes from my Dad who worked for 47 years in the tire and rubber industry as a engineer getting his masters degree in engineering from MIT in 1927 and from my uncle who worked with my dad and was in charge of maintaining the Vulcanizers used to temper the rubber formulations used in the tires to get the best combination of hardness and resistance to breakdown.

Personal experience when my brother and I worked in the auto service industry and got to see first hand how tires aged and the amount of wrecks towed in that had been in roll over accidents due to 5+ year old tires that had tread separations and zippered blowouts.

Personal experience with used vehicles having one that I had purchased with 4 year old tires which I planned to replace the tires on even though they looked new from the outside at the 5 year mark. Even though they were properly inflated, looked new and had plenty of tread left the long life GoodYears had tread seperation running at 60 mph on the expressway. Thankfully it was a rear tire on a dual wheeled truck so there was no roll-over or loss of control. Visual external inspection of a tire is misleading and gives a false impression of the tires condition. You have to dismount it and physically check for issues in the casing tread and sidewall.

Reading the current local news reports of vehicle roll-overs due to failures of 5+ year old tires. Due to property damage and loss of life the state of Florida is currently looking into passing similar regs as California to combat the loss of life due to folks being cheated and sold 5+ year old unsafe tires.

While Michelin claimes there tires can last ten years you have to dismount them for inspection every year after 5 to verify their safety by inspecting the inside of the casing. This is cost prohibitive plus the act of remounting the old tire could cause a failure too.

SafeCar.gov and NHTSA recommends erring on the side of caution and replacing tires when they are 6 years old.
www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Shoppers/Tires/Tires+Rating/Tire+Aging

My recommendation is to err on the side of caution which will save lives while the more cavalier approach of running them if they look good from the outside has historically caused property damage and the loss of life in a good percentage of the the 11,000 tow away incidents recorded as due to running old tires which does not account for fatalities that were due to running old tires but not reported to NHTSA as such.

I use to know the then president of the US Flight Engineers Union and would get the tires and tubes from him that they would remove after they had gone through the published number of takeoff/landing cycles or years of ageing/safe use allowed for them. The tires were used for retaining swales in landscaping, planters or swings and the tubes as beach floats or under floating swim platforms. Kids can have a lot of fun with a tire tube from a large commercial airplane.

Admittedly rhetorical question, If the age of the tire is so important, which I believe it is, why do the manufacturers, and DOT make it so you have to cypher the code to determine the date. Why isn't it clearly identified on the tires?

The DOT makes it so you have to "cypher the code to determine the date?"

The last four digits represent the week and year the tire was manufactured. It's pretty simple

How would you suggest they come up with a better system?
Just wondering