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How Old — and Dangerous — Are Your Tires?
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Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 10,315
How Old — and Dangerous — Are Your Tires?
For years people have relied on a tire's tread depth to determine its condition. But tire age is just as important.
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I see so many bald ones and the like, even on trucks on the trailers. I have wondered why they don't put decent tires on vehicles to prevent accidents. Thank you for the article, I check mine all the time....Tires that is a good think to check those.
I had an interesting experience with a 1975 VW Scirocco that I bought in 1983. The tires were Michelins, and may have been original, but they looked like they still had good tread left on them. After a year of driving, I noticed that the tread had hardly worn down--at all! When I finally replaced them after 2 years, the tires still looked a lot less worn than I would have expected--although I did observe that the rubber had a kind of "shiny" look that I've seen on other old tires, which I think was an indication that the rubber had actually hardened. My guess is that this hardening was due to the car's unique cycle of use and disuse (I was the 4th owner, and I don't know how long it sat idle in between owners).
The experience certainly made me a believer that tread depth was not the only indicator of when a tire needed to be replaced!
Over the years my experience buying and using tires has led me to believe that you should buy the cheapest tire of the size and speed rating you desire, then get the full Discount Tire Warranty for it, so if it fails you will get a new tire. Yes, you will have the trouble of having to change a flat and get another tire, but you will get a new one for no additional charge. More than likely the tire won't fail, and I have also found that buying the cheapest tire with the full warranty is usually cheaper than getting the next better tire without the warranty.
I use this strategy for buying TV's as well, and since electronics' prices are always falling you will get a better new TV, than the one you had, when the warranty pays off.
And since I never pass up a chance to say it regular rotation of your tires will maximize the tread life of your tires. There's no such thing as a "perfect" alignment. Something always causes uneven wear on your tires. Might be slightly imperfect alignment, might be the fact that you make more right turns than left in your daily driving.
But, generally, I wear my tires out, before any of that would matter.
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The store in town sold them for 12.95 and up depending on size. Who knows how old the cores they recapped were? I cringe now when I recall having zero fear as I flew down the freeways of So. Calif with my unbalanced recaps thumping away! I never had one come apart and neither did any of my friends as I recall.
So much for date codes on those!
Fortunately, I came away with all my limbs/digits, but I did get a nasty burn, or two.
I was driving his '71 Econoline on I-75 when the front left tire lost it's tread. That wasn't the most stable vehicle, anyway, and I got a quick lesson in emergency handling, as the rubber started flying.
15 years later, when I drove Econolines for a living, we still used recaps on the rear tires (late '80s).
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We had Firestone 500s on two cars in the late ‘70s, when they had issues. We had so many failures, that I could change a tire in about 12 minutes. Lots of practice. I think I’ve only changed one tire in the last 10 years
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Luckily he had the ring facing away from him. He was thrown across the shop which broke his collar bone and his left leg. The concussion from it going off blew out a couple of windows in our overhead doors.
I should have fired him but otherwise he was a good guy and I figured he had learned his lesson. After that, the other tire installers who were there at the time were terrified of them and for good reason.
Firestone made a split rim called the widowmaker. These were known to blow the ring off AFTER they had been aired up and taken out of the cages! I guess this was before the days of OSHA!
I still see pickups with splits once in awhile but I have no idea who will work on one now. The local tire shops won't touch them and the younger guys don't know what they are!
You should be able to pull up articles about tire age to confirm this.
Threaten to sue in small claims court if necessary.
We had a 2011 X3 with RF that only had two possible models to choose from.
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Now, with tires? I suppose this makes sense but....does it REALLY matter all that much?
How did we ever survive back when we were young and broke and bought recaps? Who knows how old those tires were before they were recapped?
And to think....we drank from garden hoses....horrors!
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