Old Tires Sold As NEW

[Lynn H.]

I just received this link from a friend. It concerns the safety of older tires, and thought that it is very applicable to our Corvette hobby, as well as the safety of ourselves and our families in our everyday driving vehicles. I thought I would share it here. Very informative and interesting to me, I thought others would think the same.

Old tires sold as "new" are killing people every month.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897

[Ray G.]

Re: Old Tires Sold As NEW

I just received this link from a friend. It concerns the safety of older tires, and thought that it is very applicable to our Corvette hobby, as well as the safety of ourselves and our families in our everyday driving vehicles. I thought I would share it here. Very informative and interesting to me, I thought others would think the same.

Old tires sold as "new" are killing people every month.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897

Hello;
Any engineers have a comment on "new tires" manufactured 6-10 years before original sale?
And the safety thereof?
Thanks.
Ray

[Bill M.]

Re: Old Tires Sold As NEW

Hello;
Any engineers have a comment on "new tires" manufactured 6-10 years before original sale?
And the safety thereof?
Thanks.
Ray

Ray and Lynn:

The message from the clip seems to be: If you have old tires, you will have a tread separation, and when you have a tread separation you will crash.

I had a tread separate on my F150 4X4 while at 70 mph in the dark on I75. There was a loud bang. I was very surprised that I hadn't seen whatever I just hit on the road (but that bang was the tread blowing off the tire). The truck didn't even twitch; I kept driving. I realized something was wrong when I heard a metallic sound (that was the wheel clanking on the pavement because the tire had lost air pressure). I thought I had dropped the driveshaft because when I tried to accelerate, the truck didn't respond (open diff. allowed the aluminum wheel to just spin.) When I got out of the truck to look, I found the right rear tire gone (only the sidewalls were left.) It was a non-event; not even close to a loss of control.

Is it possible for a tread separation to cause an accident? Sure; particularly if the tread goes inboard and locks up a wheel or cuts a brake hose.

My experience with old tires is: The biggest danger is loss of traction. I had old tires (Mustang summer driver) that were so hard that I couldn't safely drive them in the rain on the expressway. If I left enough room for a safe hard stop, someone would pull into that space. I replaced the old tires!

But I drove my '92 to an NCRS judging meet (30 miles) on the 16-year-old original tires...in the dry on surface streets where I could leave enough stopping distance. And I'd do it again.

[Michael W.]

Re: Old Tires Sold As NEW

You can always tell when it's a slow news day when they starting airing clips like this. I haven't been outside today. Is the sky falling yet?

[Terry M.]

Re: Old Tires Sold As NEW

I noted that all the vehicles they used to demonstrate the handling risks were high center of gravity design which are inherently unstable. I had decades-old Michelins toss treads on the old Suburban and had no issue safely pulling to the side of the expressway. The biggest problem I had was discovering that my spare had no air in it.

[Michael W.]

Re: Old Tires Sold As NEW

The biggest problem I had was discovering that my spare had no air in it.

Too bad the reporters in the clip weren't around- they seemed to have had plenty of air to spare, albeit it was the 'hot air' variety.

[Terry M.]

Re: Old Tires Sold As NEW

Too much moisture in their hot air. They would want to use nitrogen.

You know Mike, in fairness, there can be old tires sold as new -- especially in sizes that don't sell a lot -- and in some cases it can be a safety issue. We often caution folks looking for original 40 and more year old tires to use them for show only.

They should go after the Chinese-made valve stems -- now there IS a problem.

[Lynn H.]

Re: Old Tires Sold As NEW

I agree with you all on this. I just thought I would share it. I personally had an experience with the Firestone tires that were recalled a few years back, before the recall. While traveling on I-75 at almost 80 MPH in my 1 1/2 year old 91 Ford Explorer, one of these tires let go on the front with my whole family in the car in very heavy traffic. It was quite a hair raising few seconds and I managed to get stopped and to the side of the road without hitting anything or anyone else. At the time no one could find why the tire had let go. This was well before the recall and I received nothing in compensation from Ford or the dealer (I was told after the recall that if I would have saved it they would have compensated me somehow). The media certainly has the ability to blow things out of proportion with many issues such as this. I am guessing that the tires on half of the 6 registered vehicles I currently own and drive, are over six years old. I certainly will not go out and replace them all just because I seen this clip, but I may give them a visual inspection a little more often (certainly the cars my wife and children drive).
Lynn

[Rick A.]

Re: Old Tires Sold As NEW

it is old news and pops back on the radar towards Thanksgiving/Christmas, at least the last couple of years

[Duke W.]

Re: Old Tires Sold As NEW

I didn't bother to download the video (I'm still on dialup.), but I'd certainly bet that it is the typical moronic network slop that they laddle out when dealing with any technology.

The only time I turn on my TV (with nothing but a crude indoor antenna) is to watch college sports, auto racing, or an occasional PBS program.

This subject has been discussed here many times, so do some archive searching.

Congress considered placing a "service life" on tires, but cooler technical heads prevailed, and they realized that any such attempt would yield a purely arbitrary number.

The bottom line is that tire "life" is dependent on tire quality, and environmental factors in service including owner maintenance of proper tire pressure.

If you start out with a high quality tire - one with a spiral wound nylon cap belt, which would be any tire with a "H" or higher speed rating, and the tire spends most of it's life inside, is maintained at a suitable pressure, and is not exposed to significant ozone, it should easily last 15-20 years.

Unforunately, many vintage Corvette owners install low quality tires (which includes any "reproduction" tire and all current 205/75R-15 tires).

In order to get a high quality tire you have to start with the 215/70R-15 size, which are avaliable in H and W speed ratings, and for C3s there is at least on V-rated 225/70R-15 tire still available.

I've experienced several tread separations over the years - all driving my cars on race tracks. In all cases the tires had spiral wound nylon cap belts which kept the tire from disintegrating, and they held air. Such is not the case with tires that don't have the nylon cap belt, and I would never even consider such low quality tires for any car I own.

The Ford Explorer tire fiasco had four primary causes:

1. Many tire lots did not meet even the minimum DOT performance standards to poor quality control by the manufacturer.

2. Ford specified too low pressure in order to reduce ride harshness on what is basically a crude truck chassis.

3. Many owners failed to properly monitor and maintain tire pressure and sometimes overloaded the vehicles.

4. Drivers' general lack of skill in responding to marginal control situations such as sudden tire failure.

The combination of poor tire quality, low pressure, and overloading is the perfect setup up for tread separations, and since these tires did not have nylon cap belts, many of these tread separations resulted in sudden catastrophic disintegration of the tire, and the driver lost control.

Duke