Have your tires expired?

[thomasugenius]

Just saw an interesting article about tires expiring. My beer has an expiration date, shouldn't my tires?? Apparently not in the USA. Other countries have expiration dates on their tires, typically 6-7 years.
Check your tires to see when they were manufactured, not when they were bought by you...
Here's how: Look at the string of numbers staring with DOTxxx 1204. look at the last 3 or 4 digits.
DOT xxxxx 1204 in this case, my Revos were made in the 12 week of 2004.
DOTxxx 404 = 40week 4 = 1994 = 14 years old.
DOT 3101 = 31 week 01 = 2001 = 8 years old (expired in other countries, but not the US of A).
Hope that helps~ Happy trails.
Thomas

 

[Ulfr]

Ofcourse does rubber damage through the years. Even tho' they look great on the outside it's often good to check the inside of the sides very well.
Especially when buyin' used tires.

Altho' the (Gumbo monster) Mudders I drive on daily basis, are probably around 10-13 years old, they are still durable and are not any more dangerouse than any other newer tires.

Altho' I'm not so sure I'd trust any other brand for lasting that long, and take all the abusement that I give 'em.
Could see it very well this weekend when one of my nephew's tires went flat.
The sides of those tires were completely ruined. (Ground Hawk Mudder)

Stiffer tires are usually more risky upon aging like that rather than softer tires like the Mudders.

 

[Uneek]

On 20/20 when a similar report aired about tires and their "shelf life," it was also mentioned that most, if not all manufacturers only warranty their tires within that 6 year period from the date of production. So a tired made in 2001 and sold today, under what 20/20 reported, it has no warranty.

 

[Jeffrey_VB]

When I replaced the Michelin LTX M/S tires on my old Montero Sport they had 65,000 miles on them. The tire tech said that they still had about 10,000 miles worth of tread left on them, but they were dry rotting and cracking and needed to be replaced. He said Michelin's tended to do that, "expire" before running out of tread.

 

[Mark86]

It is funny that this thread was started now. I was actually going to post a thread on how to determine when your tires were produced. I was getting nervous because my revos have around 65,000 miles on them and are going on 5 years old.

 

[owen4runner]

I came upon a newscast discussing the importance of the DOT date codes on tires. On the segment they went to various Sears stores around the country and surprisingly enough they have tires more than 5 years old being sold on a (managers) discount rate. What's worse is that some attendants does not seem to know what the DOT code was. Some tires have the codes on opposite side, meaning you have to crawl under your car to view them.
My Runner was born May 2004. It has original BFG Dueller H/T with 35000 miles. Tires were born on the 10, 11 and 12th week of 2004.

 

[RonMAIDEN]

I don't like tires staying on my truck more than 5 years since that many heat cycles plus the time can contribute to failure even if you have less than 50k on your tires.

I would trust a set of tires with 60k on them in 3 years vs a set of tires that are say,7 years old but with only 40k on 'em especially off road.

My Nittos were made in the 30th week of '05.