Firestone tire date code 1966-1970

[Howard K.]

Re: Firestone tire date code 1966-1970

As a postscript to the comment on the tire coded 000MC119, the M is more than likely January and not December. If the tire was made in December 1967, in all likelihood the second letter would have been a R which is the code letter I have seen many times for 1967 tires. This leads me to believe that M is the code letter for January. Thus MC would be January, 1968 and I am about to conclude that ML would be January, 1969, etc.

With more data, we might be able to conclude that AL, as in Mike Ernst's tire, is November, 1969 and not December because I am seeing an AL tire code on a near NOS wheel dated K-1-9 11 (v) 14 AZ. A December tire in all likelihood would not have been put on a mid November wheel. However, there are always exceptions to logic, especially in the manufacturing process and in the installation at the St Louis assembly plant. (I toured the St Louis plant in June, 1979 and vividly remember tires coming down a conveyor system to be mounted on wheels there in the plant.)

Just st food for thought.

[Howard K.]

Re: Firestone tire date code 1966-1970

Rocco,

Thanks for the pictures of your tire. The coding is in a different order, but it still follows the pattern of 3 numbers, two letters and three numbers, but not in the same order. The first three numbers follow the pattern of 000, 001, or 002. Although I have not been able to establish any theories on the first 3 numbers, I suspect they may be the plant the tire was made. However, did only 3 plants supply Corvette tires. Possible, but who knows. Corvette tires were nylon cord while other models cars used Sup-R-Belt, polyester cord or something else. I am not sure whether any other model GM car used nylon cord tires, but nylon cord tires were probably low production tires. The order of your tire identification may reflect that it was a Deluxe Champion and not a SuperSport as in the 67 redline tire. A long time ago, I had a 67 redline tire that had the DR code in it. It came from a car built in the 2nd quarter of 1967, but I don't have the serial number of the car it came from, but it was a factory installed tire and wheel.

As as I previously indicated, I think the R is for the 1967 calendar year, but I do not have enough data to determine what the D in your tire means, but I srongly suspect it was the month code for a tire built in the first half of 1967. Your tire would indicate the D is probably February or March, since your car was built 3/31/67. As the comments to Mike Ernst's tire indicate, the AL code has been seen over a three month period. this may explain why a later built car had a Firestone 775x15 SuperSport redline tire coded DR installed at the factory.

Therfore, I would guess your tire is dated February or March of 1967. Hopefully, we will get more data to support this.

Howard Key

[Michael J.]

Re: Firestone tire date code 1966-1970

IMG_2951.jpgNot sure if this helps, but I have a set of 6.70X15 Firestone Sport Car 200 racing tires that were purchased in the mid-'60s. Here is the code on one of them.