Technical Got 5 year old tires?

I bought a new set of four firestone tires for my OT S-10 8 years ago from a dealer 75 miles away in Maryville, TN. I started having problems right away the next day, with one going flat, and my truck now had a shake. I finally complained to Firestone, and told them I would not take my truck back to the jackass that sold me the tires, again. I had him look at them 3 times already, plus he screwed me into getting all new tires. Long story.

They sent me to another dealer 50 miles away in Cookville, TN. He told me that the tire was going down because it had a nail in it. I said Bull shit, if so, then why didn't the first guy find it during the first 3 times I brought it back to him? And that the shake was because I needed a idler arm. While it was on the rack I checked the idler. I told him that there was nothing wrong with it.

When I was signing the papers that said I took it there to be looked at, he evidently had slipped in a paper that said that I refused to have my truck aligned. He never said I needed it.

I went to the junkyard, and bought four nice used tires off a van they had just brought in, and all my tire problems went away, and road smoother then with the new firestones!

I will NEVER buy another firestone product again!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pat

 

I just put Hankook Synergy tires on my coupe. Stamped made in USA. Snowman

 

The Yokohama's on my Falcon were made in the USA, too!

 

A friend of mine had a set of 9 year old tires on this F 100. At 55 mph the the tread rubber separated on a rear, and it went out of control, damn near killed him !

 

How do you guys keep tires this long?
Burnouts alone should keep the rear ones fresh

 

None of the tires on my family fleet of vehicles is newer than about ten years old. I have had a few tire failures over the years, which involved noticing the car was pulling to one side. So I stopped and saw a flat, wrecked tire and replaced it.
I have also examined my tires after noticing a rough ride, and found them lumpy, bulged and separating. With regular inspection, you can catch many a bad tire before it fails.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but tire failures don't always end in disaster. It probably helps that we drive around 55 to 60 mph.

Another cause of used tire failure may be that the tire sat flat while on a car at one point, damaging the cords with no visible evidence.

 

I think bean schoot nailed it. Drive too fast and accidents happen. I drove semi truck and over the years had many tire failures and blowouts. and because I wasn't going too fast I never even cane close to losing control. now Ive had radials tear up stuff before I could get stopped. One time I drove my old 65 chevy Pk to Tupelo Miss. I got a tire machine. It was a hot day and omn the return trip it started raining about twenty miles east of Memphis. And we where going about 50 MPh on the 4 lane. and cars would pass us and when moving over to the right hand lane they hydro planed. the heat had brought the oil to the top of the pavement ant made the road slick. We saw close to a dozen cars in the ditch & wrecked. and two we seen happen as cars passed us. And we never had any problems because we went slow on our old bias ply equipped truck. and the weight of the tire machine in the back didn't hurt anything.

 

A friend of mine in the tire business told me a story of a tire store that put a spare tire on a womans suv for her because she came in with a flat at closing time. Dropped the spare from under the vehicle and put it on for her and rolled her flat in the shop to fix in the morning. Not long after she left the shop the spare blew up caused her to crash and she lost her life. Shop was sued, lost twice what there liability ins. covered and put out of business because they put a person's spare tire on there own vehicle. The spare was older than the 7 year life span the tire manufacturer said it had and the shop should not have put it on the vehicle even though they did not mount it on the rim. My buddy will not remount a five year old tire......

 

This was a 2 yr old major brand with lots of tread left, came apart on I-680 at 65. Fender is obvious, broke the windshield, bent the bumper, broken headlight and running board, tore up the ABS wiring, dented both doors, broke the wheel and scuffed up the duallie fender- 9K in damage

 

Sorry, I gotta call BS.... There's not one tire manufacturer that will baldly state that their product becomes 'unsafe' at some magical date or has some finite lifespan. At most, some of them simply say you should have them inspected once they reach a certain age for fitness. And too many of these stories are antidotal, i.e. people hear about them second hand so who knows what the truth is? Did they just slap it on without looking at it or checking if it was inflated correctly? And even if true, it was probably more of a case of their lawyer being smarter than his...

Twenty years ago, very few people ever worried about tire age, and that included the manufacturers. Sure, if it showed obvious distress (weather checking, cracks, bulges) it would probably be removed from service but by and large if it looked good, it was good. It was accepted that tires do fail occasionally, just like cars break down. Then Ford/Firestone screwed up by recommending a too-low inflation pressure but some plaintiff lawyers drug tire age into that mess. The NHTSA did their testing and made their six year recommendation, virtually ignoring varying environmental conditions around the country, going with a worst-case, 'one-size-fits-all' deal. Again, if you read the full report the NHTSA never did state that tire age alone makes a tire unsafe, merely that it degraded some performance.

Even then, there wasn't universal acceptance of the NHTSA recommendation. The car/tire manufacturers were generally cautious initially, with some (but not all) recommending they be checked at intervals ranging from six to as much as ten years. Enter the industry-backed 'safety experts'. They started beating the drum for this, panicking the uneducated into replacing serviceable tires. The tire retailers loved this and jumped on board with both feet, it made selling more tires easy, and the manufacturers now had a 'out' on legal liability.

And if it is even semi-true, I suspect that has more to do with the manufacturers cheapening their product to match these recommendations. The competition that used to exist among the manufacturers to produce higher mileage tires seems to have disappeared.

 

The story came from a trade magazine so who knows but Walmart seams to be the only one that will mount old tires.

 

That Proves it! Now 2 year old tires are deemed unsafe!!!. possibly we better buy new tires every month just to be safe?

 

The Walmart store here is ultimately picky about mounting tires. They look at the tire condition, tire age, tire size, wheel size, wheel condition, and won't let the car out of the shop with the wheel being torqued to specs. I don't think they can (or will) mount used tires at all, and they don't mount new tires you didn't buy from them in store or on line. If they do a tire repair, you also pay for a rebalance. I don't do Walmart for tires. Gene

 

It's really no different than 5 speed transmissions, electronic ignitions, power steering, air bags or even A/C. Some guys like to look traditional and still use more modern items. I guess the "traditionally inspired" might be a good term for it. You can figure guys back then used the newest stuff they could find out of the junkyards, or else there never would have been any SBC powered hot rods after 1955. I think I read on here somewhere that radial tires started being put on sports cars in the late 50's? Some broke guy needed some tires, and bought some from a yard somewhere off of a wrecked sports car because they were the right size for his car. Or maybe somebody experimented with them after driving a sports car, trying to make their old jalopy handle like one. They were a small market up to the 80's, I ran both radials and bias plys well into the mid 80's before the radials edged out the bias on availability. What the new car makers dictate is what the market gets, hence the huge wheel /short tires now that are everywhere, while once common 14" and 15" tires are harder to find in stock, and a lot of sizes aren't being made anymore.

As to the aging problem, it's not just tires anymore, it's anything made out of rubber. Wiper blades, hoses, rubber mounts, none of them last like they used to. I've seen gas hose crack in less than 6 months, wiper blades tear in 3 months, rubber mounts crumble in just a short time. I've had cars with factory installed rubber lines that were 40 years old and while hard as a rock, never leaked or cracked. We used to take wiper blades off of one car and put them on another and they worked fine, now you're lucky if you make a summer with a set. Radial tires may be more prone to throwing the tread because of the way the belts run, but I'd bet the rubber also has a lot to do with it. There is something different about rubber products now, something they left out or something they have added in, maybe in replacement of something else, that simply doesn't have the same life as it once did. I'd be willing to bet the EPA had something to do with it but I can't say for sure, maybe somebody in the industry will chime in and tell us for sure.

 

Not government regulations, just blatant, naked Capitalism.

 

They got used on hot rods too. Where you used to see them the most was on drag cars (and the occasional 'hot look' street car), usually the higher-class cars running 15" 12 spoke spindle mounts starting in about the late '50s; saw them a lot on altereds and competition coupes. Back in those days small 15" tires were rare here, and about the only 'common' one produced here was the 5.20-15 used on the VW. But these were generally cheap tires, with performance to match. When they went looking for better, what they found was usually a European radial in a 165R or 185R-15, usually a Pirelli but you'd see Avon or Michelin once in a while. Some leaked onto the street for the superior handling over the VW offering. They seemed to fade away when the larger front wheels became popular in the mid-late 60s on the race cars, and everything else sprouted wide ovals...

So while never 'common' on street cars, they were fairly popular on drag cars in the 'traditional' era. The one street car that sticks in my mind was a brown/gold metalflake A coupe with polished 5-spokes/slicks in the rear, polished spindle mounts/Pirellis in the front, featured in R&C in '64. Another one was the Lakey's speed Shop drag Nash Metropolitan coupe that won 'best appearing' somewhere, around the same time.

 

I can't argue with that. I tend to take a more overall look at a car than at just one thing, maybe I'm just numb to the difference in appearance because they are so commonplace nowadays. Probably why it doesn't bother me as much.

 

Gimpy, have you not noticed the difference in rubber products in the last 30-40 years? I'm no expert, but there is some kind of difference. Maybe it is just companies cutting back to increase profits, but I've got to believe there are outside influences , I just don't think the major players would take the hit on their reputations for products that won't last just for a small profit increase and take the chance of losing market share in the long run. The free market generally makes products better and cheaper, not higher and lesser quality. Usually, increased regulation increases costs and lessens quality.

Whatever it is, rubber products don't last like they did years ago. I guess we just put up with it.

 

Put a back window in my truck a year ago, used a rubber gasket (weatherstrip?) I got at the local VW bug shop, cut it down to fit. I butted the ends nice and tight. A year later there's almost an inch gap at the butt, and one corner has cracked. Luckily it was a temporary deal as it was in primer, it's going back in after paint soon. Hope to find a better quality.

 

Rubber products, given modern technology, can have their lifespan end engineered down to about a 90-day period (one quarter, of one year), given equal conditions.

I work for the 5th largest automaker on the planet. We know the life span of every single item in the vehicle, barring outside influence, such as accident, or force-of-nature, including the tires.

Very emphatically, they are indeed designed with a limited lifespan.

The markup on tires is terrible. There is almost no money to be made in making and selling them, even less in retailing them. The only money made associated with them is in mounting and balancing, and alignment, and that ain't much, either.

In order to keep enough cash flowing to support those services, it is incumbent upon tire makes to keep the stock moving. If they did not, the entire market would slow, stop, and collapse.

 

So could a manufacturer of reproduction parts, where lifespan is really important, select raw materials that last decades? Or is this raw material just not available due to lack of demand from the big makers?

I would think it should be available, because the rubber parts on twenty year old "new" cars usually is still pretty good, at least where I live.

 

Why would anyone do this? Do you think that there is a market big enough for a manufacturer to make truly durable goods that last a lifetime?

They would be running into both sides of the double-edged sword, twice. High production costs, minimal markup, low sales volume, few repeat sales.

That is a recipe for a failed industry. I am pretty sure that no bank would float you a loan for that.

Almost all automobile parts, either OEM direct to manufacture, all the way to boutique market ones, like ours, have insufficient markup to turn a profit, when sold in small quantities. The profit is in volume of sales.

Making parts that last a long time slows turnover, decreasing the frequency of sales, destroying any hope of volume.

You guys lament the notion that manufacturers went overseas for production. They had to. There is so little money to be made on an individual part, that any and all expenses involved in production absolutely must be minimized.

Would you pay $475.99 for a US made Ford licenses Falcon trunk emblem? Probably not.

As for making a tire last decades, probably not. All rubber deteriorates, whether or not some folks think so. That is very basic science. Some, in the past, have been made with so much overhead (do to haphazard materials science and over construction) that they did last decades, but few are now.

If someone did make a tire that lasted decades, which is possible, it would not only perform poorly, due to how it would have to be constructed, its price, in order to be profitable, would necessarily have to be far past the pain-point of most buyers.

Would you pay $1500 for a single tire, or even just $1000?

TL;DR: Market is too small to be profitable.

 

I thought trailer tires had to have the "T" rating. Correct me if I'm wrong. Read it on the interweb...

 

I missed this earlier, so I am pulling it out, for a direct response.

In the modern automotive market, there IS NO LONG RUN.

The median number of miles that a car is expected to last is 125,000, with the end of the reliable data set ending at 200,000. Beyond 200K are statistical outliers.

Given that the average car in the US gets driven 1,000 miles per month, the US fleet average is a ten-year-old car, give-or-take.

When the data set approaches statistical outliers, we are looking at a 16.75 year old car. Let's call it 17.

Seventeen years ago was 2002. That is the entire window that a parts manufacturer has to make money from you in. The whole thing. End of story.

 

I confess to getting somewhat off topic, but I was responding to the post about poor quality rubber in the window moulding. It would seem to me that a specialty restoration supply manufacturer could use longevity as a marketing tool, since the material cost of these low volume items is presumably a small part of the cost.

I would hazard to say that some new stuff is really good quality, consider aftermarket forged pistons or Brookville body parts. And CuNi brake line tubing.

 

Gimpy, I agree with most all of what you're saying, but unfortunately there's no button to click indicating I agree but don't like it!
And the necessity of having high volume production to keep prices reasonable, or if it's a low volume "niche" item like the bias ply tires favored by some in this thread, you're going to have either, if not both, reduced quality and increased price, resulting in bias ply tires that are way too costly and often difficult if not impossible to balance, plus the performance for more use than around town to take another picture of your car at the local steak house restaurant is poor in comparison to modern design tires that "have aggressive tread patterns and are Squashy on the bottom"

 

I've heard this several times that the average age car on the road is 11 years old and my Ins. agent says that 15 k is average miles per year. So that average age car has 165k on it. Apparently there's a lot of old junk on the road.

 

THE difference in 'RUBBER' products today is that they are Petroleum based and not live rubber
.....here's an interesting read...
https://www.fastcompany.com/3033390...ne-is-solving-a-tricky-natural-resource-issue