Would you trust 10 year old tires?

[11Rider]

Hi guys, I bought a 2003 Suzuki Savage to make a bobber project. The tires are from 2002 but look brand new - still have the nubs, hardly any wear and absolutely no cracking. I hate to throw them out if they're still good but I've heard that you shouldn't use tires older than five or six years old. Any thoughts/info on this?

[natemoen]

I would probably leave them on as I built the project but I would DEFINITELY put new rubber on before I put any miles on it.

[GARTHXS]

Just go out in the street and do a monster burnout I'm sure your neighbors wont mind

[crazy steve]

This has been a controversial subject more than a few times....

The answer IMO? It depends....

That '6 year expiration' came out of testing done after the Ford Explorer/Firestone tire debacle. One of the things they tested for was the effect of aging on tires. Heat and sun exposure is the main cause of tire aging they found, and the testing regimen they chose was to test tires used in Phoenix Arizona, the city with the highest average daily temps of anywhere in the US. They found that in Phoenix (and similar enviroments), six years was about the max you could expect before the rubber degraded to the point of being unsafe. This worse-case scenario was adopted as a one-size-fits-all 'guideline' (no doubt due to the lawyers) by most tire manufacturers, with most of the rest adopting a ten year max.

One seldom-mentioned part of these test results was the finding that the effects weren't a straight-line curve, but exponential; in other words, you can believe them if you live in a Phoenix-like locale, but tire life is longer if you're in a cooler climate. And as the conditions get better, tire life is extended. A 10% reduction in the factors that cause aging will result in more than a 10% increase in tire life. How much more, they didn't say, as well as not giving a 'max' tire life number under ideal conditions.

So that puts the decision firmly back on you; was the bike stored inside or outside? Do you live in a cooler climate? Were the tires exposed to anything that may degrade them? Were they coated with a tire dressing? For what it's worth, if they were mine and the bike had been local, I wouldn't hesitate to use them if they appear good, but I live in the northwest and tires don't age here like they do in hotter climates.

Ultimately it's your call, and you get to decide how paranoid you want to be about them....

[bikerphil]

Hi guys, I bought a 2003 Suzuki Savage to make a bobber project. The tires are from 2002 but look brand new - still have the nubs, hardly any wear and absolutely no cracking. I hate to throw them out

Who says you have to throw them out? Keep them as spares, ride on new ones. New Shinkos are $100 a pair. Easy for me to say 'cause I change my own tires.

[cywelchjr]

I'd say it this way. Compare those tires to tires a couple years old for hardness and how much grip and such the rubber still has. If they still compare well, then they should be fine, if they feel like rocks then I would change them out. When I put my XS400 back on the road, the tires looked like new, but the tires were like wood. Needless to say, in that case I made a point of change them right away.

[jetmechmarty]

When in doubt, throw them out! Don't compromise your safety. With the information you have, you should be able to make an informed judgement on this.

[DGXSER]

There is no tried and true method of telling if they are good and will hold up during a long hard ride. That being the case, since your hospital deductible will probably exceed the cost of the new tires should something ugly happen, I would replace them.

[11Rider]

Hey guys, thanks for all the info and food for thought. I think I will err on the side of safety and just change them. I appreciate all your input!

[fredintoon]

Hi 'rider,
it depends on your local climate. A ten year old tire that's been baking in the Arizona sun all it's life is hooped.
A ten year old tire that's been stored out of the sun in the prairies all it's life is most likely still OK to ride.
Mind you, us sidecar operators only have one rule for tires; "Does it still hold air?"

[foreda]

10 yr old tires

No way for me!

[Danny Crawdad]

As a matter of principle -- no, they are the only thing attaching my bike to the ground, and it's too important to risk. Tires are cheap compared to hospital bills and loss of property/limb/life. They may be just fine, but who knows how the rubber compound has held up to whatever weather/environmental conditions have been thrown at them, and there is no real way to test them that doesn't involve cost higher than a new set of tires.

[je2wheeler]

Short answer -

In short, NOPE! I did have a 1972 Honda AN600 Sedan that could not ware out the rear tires at the same time go through two or three pares of front tires. There was a couple times that I had lost track of how long the rear tires had been on the car until one had thrown the tread. That was on the average of six years. I had that little car on the road for 23 years, but that is another story.

[crazy steve]

At the risk of stirring up this controversy again, I find it ironic that some will recommend throwing out tires that may be perfectly serviceable simply due to age, while there's little mention of the other rubber parts that are equally as important; the brake seals and lines. The factory recommended replacing these every two years for the seals and the lines every four (obviously a age factor, as no mileage is given), yet a considerable number of these bikes are still out there with the OEM parts on them, and you'd think that there would be numerous reports of failures if those recommendations are to be believed. There have been a few failures reported, but nothing like the epidemic you would expect seeing how the newest of these parts are now at at least 750% of their 'rated' life.

Kinda the same thing on the tires... how many age failures have been reported? Even the feds couldn't say with certainty that was a major problem, just that the rubber would degrade over time, with the six-year number being the worse-case. According to them, nearly all tire failures could be attributed to either road hazard, overload, or underinflation, with no documented cases of age being the only factor.

[natemoen]

I have seen I think 6 age related tire failures, never on motorcycles just on cars. Cars kept.in storage, tires regularly topped off to keep them from going flat, then one day the tire just decide to explode, and they do a good amount pf damage to a fender when they explode. Can't for sure say how old the tires were but age is the only thing any of us could figure out would cause this.