Tell me again why I need to replace my ten year old tires when they have perfectly good treads on them :)

I have a 73 Trans Am. I had 10 year old tires. I normally don't drive it too far. One one occasion I took it to make a call about 40 miles away. I brought it back on the interstate. I made the exit and was on a side road 1 mile form my house doing 30 when the entire tread de-laminated. Had I been on the highway like I was 10 min prior I undoubtedly would have sustained fender damage.

I had a 70 charger I was moving to my new home a while back, I'm guessing the tires were at least 10 years old, looked brand new. On the interstate doing about 70mph I watched as my drivers front fender balooned out from the tire exploding. Dropped the car on the pavement, shattered the aluminum mag and ripped up the front suspension pretty good. Luckily I held her on the road without rolling, what a friggen mess.

Old tires are just not worth the risk.

As tires age that nice flexible rubber in the side walls that holds them together gets hard and cracks, the fibers in the side walls flex and take a lot of load from bumps and lateral G's...all you need is a side wall to fail at speed and you'll not soon forget it. My guess is the tread area doesn't usually fail, its the side wall. Maybe if you're driving at 40 down a straight road, with nice smooth shoulders for run off and no traffic you could get away with it. But that's not very typical in a Pantera.

I still have some tires in my attic that I saved. Two rear tires still new and sized at 335/35/17 from Dunlop. I have to throw them away too since they are over 10 years old.

Before they had that article on TV about failure rates due to tire age, I wouldn't give it a second thought about having these mounted. Hey, they're brand new right? Now its just junk taking up space.

We should have burn-out contest. I'm sure I'm not the only one that was saving a set of tires. Take our cars out to an empty parking lot, light up the tire and see who can do the coolest burn-out. If anything, it'l make us feel better that the tires were used for something other than taking up shelf space.

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Originally posted by Tom@Seal Beach:
As tires age that nice flexible rubber in the side walls that holds them together gets hard and cracks, the fibers in the side walls flex and take a lot of load from bumps and lateral G's...all you need is a side wall to fail at speed and you'll not soon forget it. My guess is the tread area doesn't usually fail, its the side wall. Maybe if you're driving at 40 down a straight road, with nice smooth shoulders for run off and no traffic you could get away with it. But that's not very typical in a Pantera.

It might seem true, but my experience was quite the opposite. I was driving at about 25mph on a straight road with 12 year old Pirelli P7Rs that had less than 50 miles on them.

They split right between the tread with a rather dramatic "BANG!" Sidewalls were still fine, but the split right down the middle.

That did it for me - it could have been a lot more serious. I won't use old tires.

Charles....that's amazing. Did the Pirelli's have a steel belt? With the advent of steel belt tires it seems like they are almost bullet proof. I hit stuff in the road all the time .... never a failure in the steel belt....but numerous failures in side walls. Of course I can't say I've been driving on 10+ year old tires.

Matter of fact, three months ago, my son fell asleep while driving, of course as the road curved to the left (thank god it didn't curve to the right or he'd gone into oncoming traffic) he took out 125 of chain link fence and bent over 8 steel posts set in concrete...he bent three wheels but no damage to the tires! Go figure...I thought for sure one of the tires would have been damaged...but nothing.

Pirelli had a lamination problem around 15 or so years ago, make that around 1987, where the belts came off of the casings. Happened to my wife and I in a new volvo, lost 3 of 4 tires withen 20 miles of each other on the interstate. Got free replacements, but opted for a different brand then. Changed all 4. When I was a Shell dealer, we had a recall in the early 80's and had to replace all of the tires on the state trooper cars, seemed the belts were flying off of the troopers cars. Early radials, just love em.

quote:

Originally posted by Tom@Seal Beach:
Charles....that's amazing. Did the Pirelli's have a steel belt? With the advent of steel belt tires it seems like they are almost bullet proof. I hit stuff in the road all the time .... never a failure in the steel belt....but numerous failures in side walls. Of course I can't say I've been driving on 10+ year old tires.

Matter of fact, three months ago, my son fell asleep while driving, of course as the road curved to the left (thank god it didn't curve to the right or he'd gone into oncoming traffic) he took out 125 of chain link fence and bent over 8 steel posts set in concrete...he bent three wheels but no damage to the tires! Go figure...I thought for sure one of the tires would have been damaged...but nothing.

I'm not smart enough to tell you how the tires were built. They were Pirelli P7Rs. But I CAN guarantee that they split right between the tread. It just dried up and opened up down the middle

FedEx just dropped off my new tires today. The tread pattern takes a little getting used to. At least the rear wheel wells will fill out a lot better since I am finally going back to 335s from the 315s that currently fill the rears.

Those are the Kumhos you talked about at the beginning of your post? That is a really weird tread pattern....

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LIV1S

I like the look of the new tire....interesting when you look at the tread pattern it sure looks like you would be losing an inch of rubber on the ground because of the two 1/2" grooves down the center of the tire....but that may not be where the loading of the tire matters. LIV1S did you replace the fronts with the same tire?

This is really a controversial subject. I do remember a tire recapper not 30 miles from me that as long as the casing was not coming apart would recap them for you.
Looking back, that was before we were smart enough to look for the build codes on the tire walls. I'll be there were a lot of them were TEN years old?
I can tell you that my P7s are all split in the treads and are a lot older then 10 years. I'm not going anywhere with them. Just trying to decide which 15 tire to use?
My experience with failed tires was on my Ford Econoline. I had the Ford aluminum wheels on it (15x6) and had BFG All Terrain tires on it.
The first tire failed at about 18 months. It failed by the tread coming apart and throwing out a chunk about 6" x 6 ". I took it back under waranty and was told that even though the rim was within the manufacturers recommendations, 6-8" wide, it was the wrong application, and the dealer wouldn't replace the tire under waranty. He said it was designed for a 7" rim and mine was a 6".
...oh, and he's the guy that sold it to me.
Anyway, stupid is as stupid does, I put another set on the van and this time in three years, three of the tires did the same thing.
If you looked at the tire, there was cracking through the treads.
My opinion to all of this is that each manufacturer ads an aging agent, or more precisely an anti-aging agent to the rubber.
It varies from manufacturer to manufacturer but none are going to go more then 5 years.
For safety reasons, replace the tires regardless of how much tread they have at around 3 years.
That's just my opinion.
Most of these agressive patterned tires won't go more then about 8,000 miles anyway.
It's just the way it is, some things will never change-Bruce Hornsby

Probably right about the 'aging' agent added to the rubber compound. It's probably what we perceive as the new tire smell. It's actually the rubber decomposing.

I must admit that the Kumho tire pattern looks a little wierd to me too, with it's 'more aggressive pattern' and two deep rain channels but I am used to the Pirelli P7 and PZero patterns. Also, the way I had the Kumho tire set on the side by side pic is actually reversed. Instead of a directional arrow on the tire, it's labelled 'inside' and 'outside'.

I got all four tires mounted today and hopefully get a chance to take it for a test drive this Sunday.