Depends on how much you value your life, the lives of those who ride with you, and the lives of others on the road, not to mention how much you value the vehicle and the work you've put into it.
Not every blowout ends with unicorns and butterflies landing on your nose in sunny fla Folks get killed quite often. Maybe it will be you maybe not. http://permianbasin360.com/fulltext?nxd_id=208772
Driving around on/in anything you don't trust takes the fun outa it for me, anyway. Common sense should prevail. I wouldn't drive on 'em.
vic, I agree. But to be rational here, all of us are enthusiasts. I'd bet 90% or better have above average control of their vehicles at all times, new or old, stock or rod or race. I don't see any death cracks in those tires, and logic says dismount and inspect rather than ask on an open forum. 6ply tires aren't exactly race ready, but they're possibly better than some new or repop stuff. That would be my point. Also, FWIW, the Firestones on the Packard were new. Shit happens, but all you need be is ready for it. Think of it like a control thing. When you're not behind the wheel and the driver's going 110MPH, how safe do you feel? Unless you know them real well, not very I'd guess. If you've seen them go 200, you egg them on to go faster. I see no reason to express fear of death from a tire post like this.
Highlander we are surrounded by fear based people. Face it the majority of the HAMB grew up with antilock brakes, air bags and booster seats. I e=personally always put my best tires on the rear as I have blown both ends and fronts are usually eaeier to control. But I have had tirres let loose at speeds well in excess of my speedometer and have yet to tag someone else ot flip it ot even stick on in a ditch. That said if you look at a tire and it is cracked or what have you and you think of saftey or your gust says this is not good that is the tire that you should not run. My limited experience in life tells me that what you fear will always find you.
Here's how I look at it, With 4 tires 6" wide there's roughly 1 square foot or less of contact area for the entire car. Those 4 spots should be as good as possible. The entire vehicles control is relying on those 4 spots. That's an indisputable fact .... Now it gets subjective after that and can be argued till the cows come home.
Polio and Small Pox are also traditional, buy some new tires. I wouldn't be concerned as much with dying from a blowout but when you do get a flat, which you will, getting wiped out by a Honda Odyssey piloted by a soccer mom drinking $8 latte on her iphone 5 not paying attention.
I hear ya 'beaner. Last year I had 2 new looking tires blow out on my trailer in the same 4 day trip. I figured they were victims of a tire's worst enemy, UV rays. They weren't cracked, tread was well above average, air pressure was 75psi on a max rating of an 85psi tire. It got 5 new tires when I got home. Logic. When you see deep cracks you don't run em. If you see a "weathered" look, clean them up and check em out. If they hold up to a break down and remount you know what you have, but if $30 is too much to figure out the issue then this isn't the gig to be involved in. Pretty simple really, but all of this death/fear/terror shit just chaps my ass. Again, he didn't ask if they were suitable for speed trials, and the pics don't really show the true condition. I rode in a 38 Dodge PU from Stuebenville, OH to Detroit on it's old tires being dragged with a towbar. There were a few cracks but nothing deep, they held air, we kept the speeds under 65 and made it just fine. I was 16.
That is what I have been thinking for the last two pages. I grew up on and still help out on my grandfather’s farm and 75% of the tires on the old farm equipment is 20+ years old. From the trucks to the hay wagons. Now that equipment isn't going 70MPH on the hwy but it is subject to more abuse than most cars on today’s hwy. The reason most of the tires on the farm are that old is because they last. I have used many 10+ year old tires. I always check them for cracking first and if they look good I run em easy for a bit and it they start cracking OR the cracks get worse in the first 100 miles or so I pull em. In my experience most of the time they are OK. Would I put on an old set and try to take a 1000 mile road trip on my first run? HELL no but if they were ok for the first 100 miles or so they should be good for many more. I have blown tires on front and back new tires and old. Never put a car sideways because of it, hell never even changed lanes because of it. If your hoping running new tires will keep you from having a major blowout on the HWy you are running on false hope. If you are building cars that can't handle a blowout reasonably well YOU shouldn't be building cars! If your the kind of driver that is going to soil your panties when you have a blowout YOU shouldn't be driving a car of any kind.
Dick Dake....That just made my morning!!! I have to agree...spend the dough and get new ones. This coming from a guy who runs 10 ply, bias truck tires on my 27 Roadster. They are OK for tearing up the dirt roads and slow around town but that's it. Plus...the roadster is banger powered and doesn't go too fast anyway!
Yep and my trailers have 15 inch tires. Both travel trailer chassis. The 15.5 tires came on mobile homes and still do. One way axles, tires and wheels that are intended to get a shack from the factory to where it will sit the rest of it's life. The six ply tires in the original thread may be trailer tires for a camp trailer and might work fine under a dump run trailer for years but I sure wouldn't want a car with them on it running down the highway beside me at real highway speeds for hours on end.
For me this has been the best post on here so far. I'm not going to comment on the safety of those tyres because I just plain don't have the knowledge or experience. But what I will say is even niggling little doubts in the back of your mind can spoil a nice run out and you must have some of those or you would have mounted them and be out on them tearing up the highway right now, rather than asking other people's opinions on here. Your call. Do you feel lucky punk?Good luck whatever you decide. Paul
Should have left it at that...hurling insults and name calling diminishes the lucidity of your argument. What's the old saying...the lady doth protest too much.
I have 2 tires on the back of my car right now that I bought new 1 year and 3 months ago, and they are dry rot cracked to hell. Upon further inspection, the date code on them seems to be from 2009. Fucking Summit. Anyway, do I chuck them and get more since they are cracked? If they are from 2009 they are still only 3 years old and the car is either garaged or covered if I'm not driving it, usually in the climate controlled garage. Moral of the story, when you buy new tires, still check to see how old they are as soon as you get them. JW
I bought a used fifth wheel camp trailer. 10 years old or so. Tires looked perfect. Trailer sat more than it moved. That is usually the case with trailers. First trip had to change two tires. Your choice Tim
There used to be (might still be) a MIL spec for some liquid gum rubber like stuff to paint on artillery truck and jeep tires to protect them back in the days when dry rot/cracking issues were not nearly as severe as they are today. I've seen a few old tractors and what not tires with some kind of gunk painted on them that were in pretty good shape, visibly, so i think there was a civilian equivalent. Fuel and radiator hose is often not was durable as it used to be, but how much is environment, and how much results from eco regs or cheap material is hard to say. I am sort of nervous about running my 80% worn H rated Radial TA tourings with DOT codes about 7 years ago that are showing some shallow cracking in the bottom of the tread grooves, but I still do it, but would not on the wife's or kids' cars. If the date codes were real old I'd probably take them to the dump. Gotta pay $1.50 to $5 to get rid of each one these days
You can get away with running old bies ply tires because they dont have steel belts to rust and break, but NEVER on a radial. They are junk after about 6 yrs.
mount them up toss em in the trunk and go find a burn off pit , could be fun and make smoke in a safe local ....street them ??? hell no ... my.02$
Use them to do smokey burnouts, or roll around the shop. Just don't drive on them unless you like the morgue when you kill yourself, or prison for killing someone you didn't even know.
Putting the best tires on the rear is a new concept to me -- first ran into it when I had two almost new front tires on my DD develop tread separation and a vibration from that . When the tire shop replaced them, they mounted them on the rear, which greatly surprised me. When I asked about it ,I was told that was their company policy and then I was shown a film put out by NATSB that demonstrated why it was preferred that way. I'm sold!
Back when we were young, stupid, and immortal, we would run whatever tires we could get that held air. I'd like to think we're older and wiser now.
For all those posters who said something like "I've seen (or had) new(er) tires go bad, so don't worry about these old tires being defective"......you are overlooking a BIG factor. Odds...........or likelihood.......smart poker players seldom try drawing to an inside straight, even though they no doubt "have seen it done, successfully". Why don't they ?.......because the odds are very heavily stacked toward the extremely unlikely chance of drawing the needed card and they will lose their investment in the 'pot'. "Know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em". All the Casinos in the world are built with money retained or earned by playing the right side of the odds. I'll put my money on newer tires any day, over decades old tires. Ray
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