tire replacenment by age

[DaveG]

I dropped off a couple of 8 year old Michelins for casing credit the other day and the recapper told me he was going to junk them. "Hey, thems virgin Michelins there" I said, to which he replied that based on their age, the capper would not cap them.

[rv_safetyman]

Dave, I hope you got them back. 

A trucker would love to run them on a trailer and would pay a reasonable price for them.

Jim

[JohnEd]

Jim,

Would you accept a 11 year old unused "new" tire to run on the front axle?  I am being serious and that is not intended to be a smart a.. question.

Thanks,

John

[Busted Knuckle]

Jim,

Would you accept a 11 year old unused "new" tire to run on the front axle?  I am being serious and that is not intended to be a smart a.. question.

Thanks,

John

Me, NO WAY! And I'm not being a S-A either! But yer mileage may vary!  BK  

[Tony LEE]

110 lb of air..315 80r 22.5.

Seems high. Must have a pretty high axle load on the front.

[Christyhicks]

When we replaced our rear tires, they were 9 yrs old, but looked great.  The tire shop told us that they don't "buy" any tires that are more than 5 years old.

Since we had blown one already, I really have no reason to think that anyone would want to pay for a big round piece of trouble.  Blowing a tire is WAY more expensive than what you save by buying a used one. ..even for truckers.  I can't imagine anyone who puts a lot of miles on his rig, even considering buying such an old tire. IMHO, Christy HIcks

[rv_safetyman]

It would appear that my posts have been twisted a bit.

I would never recommend running old tires on the front axle of anything!!! Period!

Running older tires on the rear axle(s) of a bus is a gamble because of the damage it can cause.

Running old tires on the axles of a semi-trailer presents minimal risk of damage. 

Most cities of any size has a quarry and there are a huge number of local rock/dirt haulers and these truckers are often struggling to make a living.  They would gladly use old tires on the trailer.  The old tire will pass an inspection if they are stopped, but the old code date will not put them out of service.

I did not say what I think is old.  My goal is to replace my front tires at 5-6 years from the date of INSTALLATION.  I did a lot of work on storage damage in the rubber industry and any typical warehouse ambient condition will do almost zero damage to the tire

Jim

[Christyhicks]

They would gladly use old tires on the trailer. 

Shoot. . .the last time my father-in-law had a new tire on a trailer was the day he purchased the trailer,  . 

Larry'd pull a tire off of something because it was old and wore out, and his dad would be sniffing around behind him saying, "You gonna use that tire?". . . or Larry'd say something about needing to put new tires on something and his dad would say, "Weeeeellllll, I think I got a couple of those laying out there in the weeds from a trailer from some time ago. . . . .". . .   

Course, having said that, he SURE wouldn't pay much for a used tire either, .  ahhhhhh, the memories!   Christy Hicks

[loosenut]

The lack of correlation is the problem with anecdotal information.  When brands of tires are discussed here, there are numerous reports of this or that brand prematurely self destructing.  When in reality nobody knows.

A few years ago there was a bus owner who claimed he never ran tires less than 10 years old because of price.  He lived in Socal and only boondocked with his converted city bus in Mexico and the CA desert.  His brag was he had never had a tire failure.

When I bought my bus the PO said the tires were original to "1985".  She used the tires for a couple of cross country bonding trips with young relatives when the tires were over 16 years old.  I changed the tires because they were checking at what I thought was 24 years of age but upon going thru the paper work found out they were 27 years of age. 

I drove to Santa Barbara one weekend, to Glamis on another and a bunch of new guy aimless driving.  Each trip consisted of 300 combo miles.  The bus drove like a dream on 27 year old tires front and back.  I had problems with a bait and switch when changing the Michelins for Bridgestones, that is detailed in another thread about brands. 

I guess bottom line would be: run heavy, fast and long?  You might want to change earlier rather than later.  Jump curbs, ride timber trails and run naked in the woods?  Still might change earlier rather than later.  Drink lots of coffee, protect your tires, ride slow and easy?  You might be able to push the recommendations.


JohnEd, my Bridgestones had a date and speed code that I had to decipher myself.  The dealer personnel clearly didn't know.  Also, I would not be surprised, if the tort law you admire, is part of the motivation to put the 10 year recommendation out there.

[JohnEd]

Loose,

I don't "admire" the Tort law system.  I, personally would prefer to have the Gummmint set standards of public safety, implement inspection systems and then prosecute the villians for their profit motivated crimes against the public.  Works well in Europe.  Their safety record is to be admired....or so I am told.  Didn't someone here say that tires have a max age that can be sold?  It's like school buses or buses operated by the gummint....they are always inspected to the hilt and way better maintained than the commercial stuff is....typically.  Imagine finding a school bus that has been just taken out of service and it had defective rear brakes and none of the brakes had useful lining thickness or turnable drums and had 15 tear old tires and a badly smoking engine with a dead jug and electrical problems with the headlights.  I know that bus just doesn't exist cause those school buses are required to be inspected and maintained to a high standard.  Crummy Gummint interference.  My problem is that some people want to abort TORT and leave us with nothing to protect ourselves against the BIG guys with the DEEP pockets to afford all that legal muscle to our further disadvantage. Every state in our great nation has implemented highway safety regulations and they had to do that because the industry was casting safety to the four winds and a lot of innocent lives with it.

Does a single person here want or advocate putting us and our loved ones totally at the mercy of an unregulated and invulnerable, from a legal standpoint, systems of manufactures and corporations that have already proved themselves unworthy of unverified trust?  Stand up, be counted....there must be some.  Really, there must be cause the deregulation scheme is full underway at all times and I am paranoid and know it.  But that doesn't mean......!

Now i still love ya.  just looking for answers to what seem to me to be easy questions.

John

[JohnEd]

Jim,

Thank you for your information.  I find that "storage" info very useful and you seem to be putting your money where your mouth is.  There are not enuf people that walk the talk.

If it was I that you feel twisted anything you said I will preemptively apologize.  Didn't mean to do that....if I did.  I value your opinion and take you seriously.  It is BK that I.....ops, he might be listening.

[Christyhicks]

It IS really easy for posts to be misunderstood or intent to be hard to interpret when we're writing on these bulletin boards, that's for sure.  I still can't decide for sure if Loosenut was saying it was fine to drive on 20+yr old tires or not, no matter how many times I read his post, ha ha.

I doubt anyone questions Jim's advice or comments on safety, as he has a lot of experience in those areas.

When it comes right down to it, for us, we just step back and look at the situation as it pertains to us:
We know that tires, even when properly inflated and carrying a light load, do blow out if they have a defect, are damaged, or are old.
We know that a tire that is stored for a long time is actually more likely to give you problems than one that is run down the road at least periodically.
We know that it is in our best interest to purchase the "freshest" tires possible when replacing them.
We know that blowing a tire, at the very least, is inconvenient and at least slightly expensive, and we know that it can be, usually, damaging to the vehicle, and, sometimes, deadly to us or other drivers on the road.
Having discussed it thoroughly, having experienced a front tire blow out, and looking at the "big picture", we have decided to replace our tires every 7 years.  Of course, we take all precautions, such as keeping the pressure as per manufacturere's requirements, using a tire pressure monitoring system, etc.
If anyone disagrees, we are more than happy to offer our tires for sale when we remove them, as they will only be 7 years old and therefore valuable to at least some people on this board.  I'm happy about that, as we sure could use some money to pay for the new ones.  Christy Hicks

[rv_safetyman]

For the record, robertglines1 wrote me a PM and said that he did have tire pressure monitors and that he had made sure the tires had the proper capacity.  He also said that he had another failure (separation) with the same set of tires.

Please understand that I am not trying to say the manufacturers don't make mistakes.  If you saw what goes into making a tire, you would be convinced that there would be a very high probability of premature failures.  I have not been through a tire plant that makes the size tires we use (we did not make the big tires at Gates).  I suspect that the process is pretty automated.  However, even automation can get out of control. 

The point I wanted to make is that a very high percentage of tire failures are due to under-inflation and we have the power to avoid that cause.  The rest of the failures (up to 20%) are caused by road hazards/damage and defects.  In the 20% cases, there is not much we can do.  Having said that, we can be aware of damage we might have caused (curbing) and check the tire in question periodically.  Defects tend to show up pretty early in the life of the tire.  I wish I could explain why a suspect defect lasts 5-6 years before the failure occurs, but I know that it happens.

When you work in the rubber industry, you know about most of the ways that defects are generated and you do your best to remedy the situation.  V-belts are pretty much hand built, or at least have a lot of labor content.  A few years ago we had a rash of belt failures from separation.  As we researched the problem, the trail (via code/build labels on the belt) began to point to a specific shift and plant location.  As we investigated, we found a builder who had developed a skin problem and used a ton of protective cream on his hands.  The cream got transferred to the layers in the belt as it was being built and caused the lamination.  Lots of things can go wrong, but, fortunately, the numbers are generally pretty low.

We, the customer, can only do so much to avoid a tire failure, but good inspection, verification of load capacity, monitoring tire pressure, and replacing tires at a reasonable service life can put the odds in our favor.

BTW, if you have not viewed the Michelin Video on how to react to a tire failure, you MUST do that:  http://www.michelinrvtires.com/michelinrv/toolbox/videos-demos.jsp  You can view or download the video:  RV - The Critical Factor.  I obtained written permission to include that video in the CDs I hand out at my seminars. 

Jim

[Chuck Newman]

I looked pretty silly, when, as he finally came to a hault, I vaulted out the door, landing in a perfect firefighter crouch, extinguisher aimed at the errant tire, only to find, to my chagrin, that we were not in any danger of immolation.  Oh well, guess maybe next time I ought to actually ASK Larry if I should do anything, ha

Christy,

That was great forethought and procedure with the fire extinguisher.  You did good.  And if a fire had occurred, that action may have saved your bus.

For much of my life I, like you and most others, I didn't want to appear "melodramatic" or any of the score of terms people like to use in what they consider an overreaction.  Usually because they would be embarrassed to do it themselves, even if they privately agreed with you.  A blow to one's pride -- "What would people think of me?"

As a past first responder I learned to swallow my pride and blow off other's assumptions about me or what I was doing.  I knew what I was doing and they didn't.  The point I wanted to make is your pride can get you killed.

Practice emergency procedures from time-to-time.  It is a well know fact that in times of extreme stress you will automatically revert to your training.

Chuck

[John316]

Christy, I can identify with you. I have done that "firefighter" vault twice now. The first time was coming out of grapevine. We thought we had a serious problem with the tires (like a brake was dragging), and we were smoking on one tire. We stopped, and I did the vault out, and made sure that it had just heated up. That is all it was, and we let it cool, and went on, no problem.

The next time was a little more serious. Driving along in rural Canada (I think that it was Quebec), and the driver looked in the mirror, and saw smoke pouring out of the back of the engine. After the emergency stop, I vaulted out the door, and made it to the back of the bus, a lot faster then I thought I could. I yanked the back door open, and more white smoke billowed out. It turned out that it was steam. The coolant line that ran to the transmission cooler, had broken. Then that dumped all of the coolant (except for two gallons), right on the exhaust. We pulled over before the low coolant sensor even killed the engine. Fixed the line, refilled with water, and onto our merry way .

About the tires...We replaced our steers with Michlens, because we didn't like the way our steers looked (just for comfort of mind, then we knew that our steers were good). Then we replaced the tags, out in Flagstaff, AZ because of necessity (we had a bulge in one, and they were 8 years old). We just replaced out drives because the tread was getting wore out (we just hit the legal limit, and I don't like having that little tread on the drives).

We keep all of our tires wet with spray on tire black, to keep the weather out. So far, so good

God bless,

John