Tom,
This has been discussed regularly on all classic car fora.
For safety sake tires should be changed after 7-10 years of age (as
indicated by the marks on the tire, not the bill of sale), depending on
storage conditions and opinion of people in the know. They may be
perfectly OK after this time but you cannot be sure. The compound
hardens ( leading to bad road behaviour and wet road performance) and
can change without any external signs like cracks or crazing, also
invisible internal delamination can be at hand (sudden blow out,
desintegration of tire).
Tire tests show again and again that NOS tires do not comply anymore
with the original High Speed requirements and many serious accidents
caused by a blow out have been attributed to old tires that were sold
and fitted as new tires.
My own experience has been with the tires on my Jensen Healey I bought 2
years ago. It had new tires in 1999 (date of manufacture 1997) , had
driven about 2000mls from that time and the tires looked absolutely
brand new. Wet road behaviour was terrible and it handled like a dog, OK
they were Hankooks but even new Hankooks should not handle that bad.
Obviously the compound had hardened considerably.
I changed them recently to Nokian V tires and this changed the road
behaviour of the car very dramatically.
Kees Oudesluijs
NL
Tom McCay - Classic-Car-World Ltd wrote:
> Hi all, we had an interesting discussion last night at our monthly local car
> club meeting when someone asked the question of "what life expectancy should
> we expect from the tyres fitted to our classic cars"? Some of these cars do
> less than 1000 miles a year and almost all are laid up during the winter
> months in dry storage. Some cars have been in the same ownership for over 10
> years and have the same tyres fitted when they acquired the vehicle.
>
> The tyre condition is good with no apparent cracking on the tyre walls that
> you see on some very old tyres and tyre wear is not the issue either, but at
> what point should you consider changing these anyway due to age?
>
> Kindest Regards
>
> Tom
> Classic-Car-World Ltd
> www.ccw-tools.com
>
> AH 3000 MkIII (BJ8)
> MGA 1600
> Mini Park Lane
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