[Shotimes] (OT) Safety group seeks tire expiration date

[Ron Porter]

As with other consumer group concerns, I don't feel that 37 deaths over an
unstated period of time (the oldest was in 199, but they never said the
period....over 20 years???) is worth a mountain of regs (don't 5-6 people
die every year from being crushed by vending machines?).

Making the "Born-On" or "Expiration" date on a tire more prominent would be
good, though. There is a side benefit for the tire companies in that they
could not be liable for accidents involving old tires.

Don, because you haven't had old tires go out on you doesn't mean the
potential isn't there. I have tires on my motorcycle with about 3K miles on
them that were installed in 1988 and will never see the road again. Same
with the tires on my Fiero GT. They are under 10K Goodyear GT IIs that have
had one year of inside and 5.5 years of outside storage. Those will be
driven to the tire store for new shoes.

On my daily drivers, I don't even want tires to last over two years. Of
course, the new silica compound tires may hold up better over time.

Ron Porter

-----Original Message-----
From: Donald Mallinson [mailto:dmall@mwonline.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 10:27 AM
Cc: Shotimes; SHO Tech; V8List SHO
Subject: Re: [Shotimes] (OT) Safety group seeks tire expiration date


You can find the article by just entering "Tire expiration 
date" in the search feature of the web site.

I think an "expiration" date might be a better idea than a 
"born on" date, but either would be good.

If you take the amount of old tires out there, and compare 
their failure rate to the failure rate of brand new tires, I 
bet you see an almost identical failure rate.

As someone that has had old cars, I have had some cars with 
30 year old tires!  And I have had most of those tires over 
100 mph!.

Also trailer tires are notorious for "aging out" before you 
get close to wearing them out.  Most people that know what 
they are doing can see the signs of an old tire and know to 
get new ones when it is important.

Old tires get little cracks in the sidewall, mainly from UV 
deterioration (sun damage).

I have never heard directly of an NOS (new old stock) tire 
failing on a collector car.  I suppose it has happened 
though.  NOS tires are a big deal and worth a LOT of money. 
  Even if a proper reproduction tire is available, NOS tires 
are better for show purposes.   I have heard of more brand 
new reproduction tires failing than the old tires!

We have a small trailer in our barn that we use a couple 
times a year to go one mile to get a small load of oats for 
Jan's horses.  The tires on it are from about 1960!

I just replaced the tires on my flatbed trailer after over 
15 years of use.

The 66 Grand Prix I recently sold still had tires on it that 
were old and 1/2 worn when I bought the car in 1988.  They 
are probably at least 20+ years old, and I gave the new 
owner a set of "new" tires that I was saving that had to be 
at least 18 years old, but still had new tread and had never 
seen the sun (always stored properly inside).

Like most "safety" things, it is terrible when even one 
person looses their life, but how in the world can anyone 
know if the failures in the article are from "old" tires 
failing just because they are old, or more likely, they are 
tires that have been run too low on air, not maintained 
properly or overloaded.  It is much more likely that these 
are the reasons for the failure than just that the tire is old.

It would be a shame if an entire new round of costly 
"safety" regs were created to try to solve a problem that 
you can't EVER stop....the stupidity of some people.  Brand 
new tires, that are underinflated and run at too high a load 
will continue to fail no matter what rules.

We need to beware of Big Brother getting another foothold.

Don Mallinson



Ron Porter wrote:

> Interesting article from yesterday's Detroit News. 
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/47zn6
> 
> The tire expiration date thing has been kicked around before. Although
it's
> too bad for the 37 people, these deaths go back at least through 1999, so
> this isn't major death contributor, but I'll bet a lot of tires fail and
> cause a lot of inconvenience for people.
> 
> Ron Porter