15 year old tires

So I just bought a car that had been in dry storage for 10 years. Inside the car was a receipt for the tires dated 1996. The tires look great and don't have no flat spots.

So my question is should I replace them or if they look good then they are good?

Thanks. Rick

Replace after serious burnout, please post video/pictures/scratch and sniff tabs.

Looks are one thing, but are they stones? Check the date code on the tires, they may be older than that. I wouldn't trust 15 y/o tires but that's just me.

No way. Would you trust a 15yr. old timing belt? A tire's got a much more complicated construction. More places (rubber/belt interface, etc.) to go bad.

I'd trust them from my house to wherever I happened to get my tires mounted.

I'd run them until if or when one goes bad, then get more. This is why they put a spare in the trunk.

tires are sposed to be a max of 5 or 6 years. id drive slowly to get new tires and thats it.

IF you want to see how bad they are... Goose it once. You will think that Bias Ply tyres are a good idea

Keep your spare inflated. Avoid interstate speeds. Definitely don't race it on that rubber. But for parts-store runs and getting gas, sure. I won't tell you not to drive on them at all.

But if this is your new daily driver, I'd be replacing those tires in short order.

FWIW.. I spent 5 years rebuilding my last Fiat spider. Got it nice and painted with a lot of new stuff on it (I was in my earky 20s and this was a father/son project) within a week of owning the car, I put it into a guardrail.

Seems the 5 year old tyres I had one the car (new when the car was taken off of the road had hardned and even in following a moderaly driven car... I slid off of the wet road and right into the guardrail.. it was like I was driving on ice

It was a hard lesson to learn

Put me in the "hell no" camp unless this is a car you're never going over 35 mph in.

ansonivan wrote: Replace after serious burnout, please post video/pictures/scratch and sniff tabs.

This.

Even if they look fine, you just can't trust them at 3 times the recommended maximum age.

Are they dry rotted? Does the rubber feel hard and plasticky? No? Probably fine then. 1996 tyres are a lot different technology than 1976 or even 1986 and are fairly modern by today's standards. They last a LOT longer than they used to. Check for lumps or belts de-laminating every few days, and swap 'em off before you do any epic cross country road trips, but you'll be fine. No sense sending a perfectly good set of rubber to the landfill because of some arbitrary sell-by date. We're not talking R-compounds here, for commuter driving I don't see any problem.

Anyway the worst that can happen is a blowout. Keep your spare with you if you're worried.

well.. my story with the fiat.. took place about 1993.. so we are talking about the same time frame.. and those tyres were really not that old.

I would NEVER trust 15 year old tyres.. just like I would never trust 15 year old belts or hoses.. and there is a LOT more riding (sorry) on your tyres than your belts or hoses

Let me add my two cents of anecdotal experience on very old tires that looked fine, with tons of tread left: unbelievably poor wet traction, very unsafe in the rain.

Well I'm not even going to ask about the 20+ YO Michelin ZXZs on my 64 Spitfire. The problem is you can't get new ones any more.

I had 7 year old tires on my car when I got it. I drove on them for a few months but they lost a lot of air (~10 psi each a week) and I finally got tired of having to pump them up all the time.

Well this is awful news!

Now I will have to tell my wife that I have to get new tires and most likey new wheels, you know because now would be cheaper now.

Thanks everyone for the input! Oh and I have four tires for sale if you are interested.

Sultan wrote: Thanks everyone for the input! Oh and I have four Vintage tires for sale if you are interested.

Fixed that for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDgSk5xWkrI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9wvRrqSP1k

This is an interesting thread for me, given that I picked up some Craigslist tires for the Centra Type 11's I just put on my 325es. Barums, look nearly brand new, but are 6 years old.

Discount tire mounted them, but advised against it.

If you watch the link that fasted58 put up from ABC, most of the tire failures in the story are in the 10yrs or older category. One of them I think was a six year old tire (like mine!).

So a quick search yields this link: http://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/SRS_092806.pdf

Looking at the report, there were a couple of outlier brands that indicated that age either was or was not an issue (mileage independent), and that factors such as tire construction and speed rating may play a part.

It's been too long since I was in statistics to correctly interpret the raw data, nor do I know how the safety tests accurately reflect tire performance or not relative to "real world conditions". A GRM'r with suitable skills can review the data in the link and fill the rest of us in.

6 years seems to be the "magic" limit for the "experts" but I do wonder in this, the most litigious society on the planet, that a trial lawyer has not made a mint on suing the mfgr's for "old tires" if it were that big a problem. Failures like the Firestone deal from a few years ago would seem to me to be much more prevalent in the news if there were anything to the 6 year mark. Ford has recommended 6 years, but then they were the ones who used the Firestone's and had some real troubles as a result.

Given the information I see, call me concerned, but color me skeptical as related to six years (says the guy right on the bubble...).

run em. no one ever thought about the age of tires until that ABC News story came out.

weird I lost a tread on a good newer tire at interstate speeds while towing a car and the suburban I was driving barely let me know something was going on other then the obvious bang... my first reaction was to look back and make sure I didn't drop the truck off the trailer

You want to risk a blowout or snap oversteer? Trust me, at our age, any consumable that's 15 years old & doesn't say VSOP on the label should be avoided.

Odd, my Liberty was 8 yrs old along with the originall Goodyear tires. With 4/32" terad left, they still had fairly good traction, even in the snow. Three of them always lost air, even from new.