Old tyres

Phil Robson

Phil Robson

Well-Known Member
I have a nice period looking set of 'Hankook' 165/14 tyres to put on my 2000. I asked a tyre place to put these on my repainted rims & they said they were probably dating from 1989, so they wouldn't touch them.

The tyres look almost like new & have been stored out of sun on their side etc. My thoughts however are not to use them as they are so old & have therefore ordered some similar looking ones which will cost £300 for 5 fitted tyres. Am I being over cautious?

There's also the riveted rim debate - most of the refurbished rims have riveted centres, whereas the ones that the old set are on are welded. I don't want to use tubes (see viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18097&hilit=+tubeless) so I'm going to have to tidy up yet more rims... :(

Better to be safe than sorry. What do others think? Would the old tyres be OK?
 
There will be a date code on the tyre wall somewhere but the general rule of thumb is not to use tyres that are over 6 years old. They will degrade even when they have been stored correctly. Regarding rims, are we talking rostyles?
 
Don't fit them its simply not worth it. I know of a couple of p6 club members who have been on runs or picked up a car they'd just bought with old tyres which had failed, luckily at low speed. In one case the guy was still pretty shook up.
Regarding tubes/tubeless there was a thread recently about this very subject. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18097
 
richj said:
There will be a date code on the tyre wall somewhere but the general rule of thumb is not to use tyres that are over 6 years old. They will degrade even when they have been stored correctly. Regarding rims, are we talking rostyles?
Click to expand...

The guys looked for a date code - I think the tyres are too old for that system!

As regards rims, they are 'normal' 5J steel rims which are formed of 2 parts.
 
From memory there were two ways to read date codes, I cannot be sure but from around 2000 the codes went over to a DOT number system and prior to that the were letter coded to indicate age. If in doubt don't.
As for the rims, well I would have the tyres mounted unless there is significant corrosion and then leak tested.
 
Yep, definitely the right decision. When I bought mine the front tyres were 27 years old. Changed em pretty rapidly! Not worth the risk, with a set of tyres costing about but the same as 3 tanks of fuel....
 
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