 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
Car Forum / Driving, Maintenance, Tuning / Maintenance and Repair / November 2005about tires
I noticed in a recent Wall Street Journal article that Bridgestone is recommending replacing tires that are 10 years old, regardless of tread depth, even including spare. The article mentioned that Ford recommends replacement at 6 years. Discount Tire store says replace at 5 years. Apparently, the National Tire Association (??not sure of name) hasn't yet gone along with any of these recommendations. Reasoning behind this is materials that tires are made of will deteriorate after some time period. Does anyone actually replace tires after a time period, even though plenty of tread may still be on the tire?? Is this just trying to sell more tires?? >Reasoning behind this is materials that tires are made of will deteriorate >after some time period. > >Does anyone actually replace tires after a time period, even though plenty >of tread may still be on the tire?? Is this just trying to sell more >tires?? I had some (mounted) tires that were in good shape when I put them in the basement. A decade later, I was driving a car that fit them, which needed new tires. So I put them on. They seemed fine for about a month... then one of them blew, and I put on the spare... then another one blew the next day (this one with a big chunk of the new tread hanging loose from the surface). Clearly there was some degradation (probably dry rot) taking place in my basement. Unfortunately these were TRX sizes, so I wound up having to replace the rims with standard sized ones from a junkyard while driving around with a weird set of mismatched tires..... --scott  Signature"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." >I noticed in a recent Wall Street Journal article that Bridgestone is > recommending replacing tires that are 10 years old, regardless of tread [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > of tread may still be on the tire?? Is this just trying to sell more > tires?? My wife used to put 2-3000 miles a year on a car. Her tires used to dry-rot and form cracks on the sidewall after 4 or 5 years. Rather than take a chance of a blowout (especially by herself at night), I opted to replace her tires. I've gone as long as 8-years. But the tires were really showing the dry rot and cracked all over. I replaced them with plenty of tread left. i just replaced my boat trailer tires. the originals were still on the trailer, but sidewalls were cracking badly. boat is a 1982 model I noticed in a recent Wall Street Journal article that Bridgestone is recommending replacing tires that are 10 years old, regardless of tread depth, even including spare. The article mentioned that Ford recommends replacement at 6 years. Discount Tire store says replace at 5 years. Apparently, the National Tire Association (??not sure of name) hasn't yet gone along with any of these recommendations. Reasoning behind this is materials that tires are made of will deteriorate after some time period. Does anyone actually replace tires after a time period, even though plenty of tread may still be on the tire?? Is this just trying to sell more tires?? > Does anyone actually replace tires after a time period, even though plenty > of tread may still be on the tire?? Is this just trying to sell more > tires?? My experience is that the rubber compounds that tire makers started using in the early/mid 90s really do start to deteriorate much faster than tires used to. I've had several tires develop deep cracks in the tread/sidewall junction after 6-7 years, despite having very low mileage. OTOH, I currently have a pair of very old (date code 1984!) Eagle ST tires on my daily driver. They were stored indoors in the dark, and are holding up fine (but they're not so hot in terms of ride or traction- they're decidedly old-tech and I'll probably replace them before long even though they're essentially new, treadwise). The tires that I've noticed showing short life are the kind I find most desirable- the ones that have a high treadwear rating (400 or more) but still maintain an "A" traction rating. My guess is that the rubber compounds used to get both traction and long wear are the ones that happen to degrade with exposure to air, UV, ozone, etc. and those started showing up in the 90s. All things considered and having had a chance to compare truly "old tech" tires with the new, I'll tolerate replacing them every 6 years if I have to. New tires are just flat better than the ones from 20 years ago. The key word is "if I have to." I don't think I'd ever trash a tire JUST because its old, I'd wait for a problem to show up. An attentive driver can detect the beginnings of a tread separation hundreds of miles before the tire disentigrates. Drivers that ignore a shimmy or steering wheel wobble or "whom whom whom.." sound are the ones that will get bit by a tire coming apart. |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.