Tires Can Wear Out Even If They Haven’t Gone Very Far
If you must buy used tires to outfit your vehicle, there are some important points to consider before you take the plunge.
A tire begins to diminish the moment it
leaves the assembly line. Its first hundred miles is the best it will
offer and it’s downhill from there. Between six and 10 years, its rubber
and internal components will begin to get the tire equivalent of
hardening of the arteries, often called dry rot. Tires are like humans that way: They can degrade and weaken even if they haven’t gone very far or done much. Prime example: your grandmother’s 9-year-old car may only have 10,000 miles on the odometer, but it needs new tires.
Some car makers, including Mercedes-Benz, recommend
removing a tire that’s more than 6 years old, even if plenty of tread
remains: Mercedes knows some of its vehicles will reach 155 mph on the
curvy German autobahn and the blazing-hot highways of Saudi Arabia.
(Though not recommended, they could also top 100 on Tennessee’s
Interstate 40, which the late auto journalist L.J.K. Setright called
“the fastest autobahn in the world.”)
Tire Age
The tire industry argues
that it’s nearly impossible to accurately determine age-related damage.
That’s because a tire that waits for its first owner in a carefully
climate-controlled tire-company storage warehouse is in something like
suspended animation. However, one left in the sun on display may be
almost worn out inside before it’s mounted on a vehicle. And the ones I
put in the cool crawl space under my house in garbage bags are somewhere
in between. Still, some tire companies recommend tires that have been in service for 10 years be replaced.
Almost every driver can find out a tire’s age
just by decoding numbers on the tire. Your tire’s “born-on date” is on
its sidewall, part of the government-required Tire Identification Number
(TIN), according to SafeCar.gov.
The TIN is an alphanumeric code that begins with “DOT” (the
abbreviation for the U.S. Department of Transportation). The last four
digits indicate the week and year in which the tire was made. A TIN
ending in 0112 means the tire was made in the first week of 2012. (If
the DOT code ends with a letter or contains less than 10 digits, check
the opposite sidewall. If you can’t find such a number or its been
ground off, assume the tire is far too old for safe use.)
History
While there is no way to track the history of
a used tire, it’s safe to assume the used tire likely was driven
underinflated: A recent study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found
that even new cars with Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) often
have at least one severely underinflated tire. Also, a used tire could
have suffered significant damage from a pothole, been repaired
improperly, or permanently damaged when being dismounted. Make sure to
have the used tire properly inspected by a tire professional before
purchase and installation.
If you’ve just acquired a used car and face
otherwise untraceable issues with tire wear, handling, excessive noise
or the like, check to make sure all four tires were produced at the same
plant at about the same time. It’s ideal if the TINs are identical on
all four tires and, if applicable, the spare.
Tire companies, like the manufacturers of
just about every other product, often make changes during production
runs and sometimes produce the same product in multiple plants. A tire
made a couple of years after — or in a different plant than — its
otherwise visually identical sibling may have subtle but important
differences. The plant code is immediately after DOT on the TIN. You can
find where your tire was built at the DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website.
Remember to check your spare tire. (You may
find you don’t have one!) It’s possible to have a spare that’s never
touched the ground but is so old that it should be thrown away. And
finally, to ensure your tires are properly inflated, SafeCar.gov suggests you check the tire pressure of all your tires (even the spare) monthly.
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