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That 'six year expiration' on tires is fallout from the Ford Explorer/Firestone tire debacle years ago. In the wake of all the finger-pointing, some testing was done by the Federal government as well as the tire/car manufacturers and that number was agreed upon.
a four-wheeled US-specific SUV road-speed/inflation pressure/vehicle-instability issue onto a discussion about a two-wheeled motorcycle with one old, used, tyre in the Climate of Tasmania, a totally cool part of the Commonwealth.
Originally posted by crazy steve
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So, in your opinion, no one can statistically prove that a specific tire/tyre will fail after a specific amount of time has elapsed since its original date of manufacture so it's perfectly alright to tell someone else! (someone not you!) to ride a motorcycle in a country that quite probably has regulations specifying the age at which a tyre or tyres should be replaced because in the USA, until more property is destroyed and more people are injured or die it's just smoke and mirrors staged by ambulance chasers and greedy corporations.
A more apropos example would be buying a motorcycle from a mother with a young child and there is a condom in the fairing. The date code stamped on the open package says that it's only six years old. The seller smiles at her child in fond recollection and says that it was fantastic the last time she rode it.
A quick visual inspection by you, the new owner, confirms that there is no trace of unusual heat, wear, tear, cracking, or checking. From a strictly mechanically detached and impersonal point of view, the group 'wisdom' says that you should just buy a new rubber but that the old, used one might last for a few more rides as long as you fill it correctly and only use it slowly and carefully because 'everyone knows' that the horror stories about catastrophic failures are statistical exaggerations fabricated and stretched out of whole spreadsheets by unethical lawyers working for greedy corporations to frighten feeble-minded consumers.
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), but a few interesting things came up. First, there are examples of 'aged' tires failing for no apparent reason; the original poster was upset that one of his tires threw the tread with no warning and heavily damaged a hard-to-replace fender. This was quickly followed with more posts recounting similar incidents of old tires. But a common thread emerged.... nearly all of these were steel-belted tires, as were the Firestone tires that started all this back in the 90s. One poster remarked that he worked in the industry then, and the majority of failures they saw were in the steel belted lines, and he did say that many tire lines were redesigned in the wake of the Ford/Firestone deal; read into that what you will. But back to the 'old' tires, many didn't know how old these tires were when they failed, but the majority were well beyond 10 years old, some over 20 (the tires that started this thread were 26 years old!). 
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