Tires  By  scooter12 (Read 7,628 times)

A common portable propane tank that is used on most patio or portable equipment must be inspected on a fixed time schedule however after so many years it must be replaced. The only exceptions are ASME certified or other permanent vessles.

Fed minimum is to inspect at 12 years then dropping to a 5 year recert with a finite amount of practical recerts being possible however State regulation many times are more strict. In Florida State law superceeds the Fed and puts it on a tighter schedule with the tanks that are not under ASME regs out of service after 10 years and the propane station will not refill them. I just purchased a tank from the local propane refill station that was already 2 years old sitting on the shelf so they took 25% off the price of the tank to compensate for it only having 8 years usefull life left in it. I have been given a number of used tanks by folks that were moving away, had deaths in the family, etc and I have been turned down on refill many times since the tanks were past the last date of recertification. There is then the disposal fee to be dealt with too which may be the reason some of these folks gave the tanks away so they would not be stuck with something that the had to pay to get rid of. That is not accounting for tanks rejected because they still had the old style Prestolite valve on them. Note that the recert process when allowable can also cost you more than the value of the tank.

It would be an intersting concept to not be allowed to refill tires with air yourself and have the refiller keep track of tire date codes and safety recertifications just like at a propane tank refill station.

In Massachusetts where they had State Safety inspections it was out of your hands as you could fail for tire issues including under inflated, cracked, unevenly worn or being out of date by the states standards.

Maybe where you live things are a bit more wild and left to chance however many of us live where the state has stepped in where it finds Federal Regulation lacking to mitigate loss of property and life from unethical businesses selling potentially unsafe products with the state erring on the side of caution.

I know that when I first moved to Florida and found out things were allowed here that you would not get away with in Massachusettes it felt like I was moving to a third world country. Just on the difference with what a bank could get away with on holding paychecks for deposit for weeks was a surprise when in other states they would have to deposite the funds immediatly and go after the employer for writting bad pay checks instead of penalizing the employee.

What you can get away with and even I could get away with in Massachusetts even if the law does not pinch you will not work in many other parts of the country due to the diversity of climate. What you might get away with in some New England states, Washington State, Montana, Michigan and other states on the Canadian border isn't a good practice for most other parts of the country.

In Florida I plan on changing my tires on roadway vehicles every 5 years regardless of how new they look. The only time I cheated and pushed a tire that "Looked New" past 5 years it had a tread seperation on the Interstate in Southern Florida at 5 1/2 years. That was a properly inflated 12 ply 245/70-19.5 GoodYear 670 with extra carbon black in the casing formulation to promote long life which is a tire specifically designed for interstate travel in hot climates and it still did not make it past 5 years here in the South. I was trying to save up a bit more before having to invest a few thousand dollars on new tires for that vehicle. I put a lesser set of tires on that were not formulated as well for our climate and although they "Looked New" the casings started to fail and herniate between the tread ribs after 3 years use in Southern Florida.

Many of our rollover accidents here in the Deep South are by vacationers from the New England States or Canada that do not have a clue what hot semi-tropical roads and interstate travel can do to old out dated tires especially if their rubber compounds are a regional formulation targeting the Canadian border states.

There is a whole different climate system once you get past Maryland/Virginia and what you might get away with north of that won't work out very well points South.

You keep trolling with that one even though the answer hasn't changed.

You dad rolled the dice and did not come up snake eyes and should count his blessings. People are not always that lucky.

I have pretty consistantly said past 5 years you are taking a chance and are pushing it. Not once did I endorce or imply an annual change.

Once I mentioned that I had three year old tires that were constantly run here fail even thought they looked new with plenty of tread on them.

There are many high risk activities that you can endorse and engage in with the simple truth being that eventually you will get bit and won't continue to get away with it.

Again: following that logic, why don't you replace your tires every year?

I have seen the sky fall. I spent a long time in both a Motorcycle and a tire shop. Old tires fail in spectacular ways its not fiction. Just because you haven't doesn't mean it won't.