Do tires age???

It's interesting to read about how to react to a motor home tire blowout.
Human nature is to immediately apply the brakes when in reality that is the worst thing to do.
A left (or right) steering tire blowout will cause a huge drop and drag, sharply pulling that side over ,and applying the brakes magnifies it tremendously.
The experts say to gently accelerate until you have your steering under control and then lightly brake.
There are a lot of dash cam you tube videos of motor home tire blowouts with the rig careening into the median or cutting across multiple lanes of traffic.
You really only have a second or two to react and I'm not positive even I would react properly .
I just saw what a front tire blowout did to a rv here in town.
It literally destroyed the entire front of the rig including wheel well,bumper,storage compartment and steps.
On I 90 out in South Dakota I saw a right rear tire blowout take out the Onan generator compartment dropping the generator on the highway!
I'll just install new tires every 6 or 7 years!

Bob
 
Ive had the belts come off some old tires that were on an auction car I bought, but it took a year and half for it to happen. The tires were so old they literally had "Sears" molded into the sidewall.

My Nissan truck got a flat in 2008, and out of desparation, I put the spare on from under the bed. I knew it was old, but until it was on the truck, I couldn't see the D.O.T code clearly. It was the original spare, from 1984.

And somehow, it was....fine. Maybe protected by layers of Georgia clay and being kept out of the sun had something to do with it.
 
Even if you keep your vehicle inside a garage or other structure, other things can negatively effect your tires, namely any equipment that gives off ozone, like refrigerators, freezers, air compressors. This will hasten the rubber`s decomposition.
 
And somehow, it was....fine. Maybe protected by layers of Georgia clay and being kept out of the sun had something to do with it.
Helps certainly, but its still not going to be quite as awesome as it was when new. Sunlight just kills rubber though. I cringe every time I see a rear or roof mounted spare with no cover on it. I know few people do 5 tire rotations and 5 tire replacements so who knows what kind of shape those things are in after years of sun baking.
 
A blowout of that magnitude in a car is scary enough at highway speeds. In a heavier/taller vehicle, I would be a lot more concerned as well.

I noticed on my trip back in August that at the national parks, I saw a lot of rental RVs. At least half. Unless someone travels a lot and makes use of it, they are a drain on finances (cost of the RV, insurance, storage, maintenance, etc.). Where we live, most use their RVs/campers maybe three or four months out of the year, and normally only on weekends, while the expenses are year-round. Makes sense to rent!
I did buy a motorhome about twenty years ago. I was such a cheapskate that I bought a "temporary" license for it. The state forgot to fill out the date so I just kept it on the dash on every trip with a pen so that if I ever got pulled over I could just fill out the date.

Never did.

Saved me a LOT of money. Motorhome abs were expensive in Washington state
 
I do keep ours rotated, but I have seen the feathered wear after as little as 10,000 miles. Mildly, but it was there. That usually means I need the alignment. Plus, even if the tires don't get cupped or feathered, the fronts wear a lot faster than the rears with a FWD. It's not uncommon to see FWD cars with different sets of tires, front and rear, since previous owners probably never rotated the tires. And that makes you wonder what else they neglected.

I also wonder if some cars/trucks have no means of aligning the rear wheels. My old CR-V is adjustable but on its last alignment, I was told they adjusted it as far as they could, so it was just at the tolerance limit for being considered as aligned.
Back when I was young and cheap, I didn't bother to rotate, but just kept changing the front tires. I do rotate now. That first rotation is really the most important one. At 10K it's time.

During most of my life, aligning the rear end was a foreign concept. This is especially true in the world of live rear axles.
 
just put some pilot super sports on my 07 STi... wicked tires man!! The change in performance was drastic coming from mid/high range all seasons the way they hug the road makes me feel like I dropped the car an another inch or so. You're so right about how they feel in the rain too.. esp with the awd. Will pick up some blizzaks to wrap around my spare RPF1s

I should've committed to true dedicated summer/winter setups a long time ago. "performance" all season is an oxymoron
The first thing I learned about summer tires is that they are usually BETTER in the rain than all season. The only good thing about all season is that when it is REALLY cold, the tires don't feel like they are carved out of solid pine.

But, truth be told, I never had a traction problem with my PSS's during the Kentucky winter.
 
I once put a set of used winter tires on an old beater s10 blazer. They had close to 3/4 tread and didn't show any dry rot cracks, but the first time I took them on a snowy road, I might as well have had four racing slicks on.:eek: They had hardened to the point where they were completely useless and a disaster waiting to happen. I ended up giving them to someone to use on a woods beater.
 
During most of my life, aligning the rear end was a foreign concept. This is especially true in the world of live rear axles.
I found out about rear alignment the hard way. ;) My ex spun out in the '88 Accord we had, and bumped into a curb with a rear wheel in the process. The tires were maybe four or five months old. In the summer, we drove on a trip down to Texas and by the time we got down there, I noticed the edge of the tire was nearly worn through to the steel belt. I had a shop flip the tire around, drove home, and then had the alignment done--that one rear wheel was way out of whack. I since noticed on a '92 we had, that I was getting noisy growling in the rears, and it was again the rear alignment.

I had one of those crappy Merkur XR4Ti things back then, and those wore out the inside edges of the rear tires, and there was no way to align the rear, short of having some custom racing shop work on it with shims and whatever else needed to be modified. (It was rear wheel drive.) I saw others driving down the road with the same problem--both rear wheels splayed out at the bottom. Just an overall dumb design. You would think it would at least start out with properly aligned wheels! But they came from the factory that way.
 
Thats the good and bad thing about a solid rear axle. If its out of alignment, something is bent and needs to be replaced. On the upside, if you know you haven't hit anything you can pay for a 2 wheel alignment and save a couple bucks.
 
On the upside, if you know you haven't hit anything you can pay for a 2 wheel alignment and save a couple bucks.
Where I live, it's hard not to hit anything. Progress is being made in a few spots, but we do have some of the worst roads in the country. Aside from wheels and tires taking a hit, windshields are another thing that take a lot of abuse, much of it from loose stones from our decaying roads. My old CR-V's windshield was hit several times, hard enough to crack it. I never bothered to replace it for a few years since it was being abused so often. The final straw was a small stone that hit hard enough to leave me with tiny glass shards inside.
 
I once put a set of used winter tires on an old beater s10 blazer. They had close to 3/4 tread and didn't show any dry rot cracks, but the first time I took them on a snowy road, I might as well have had four racing slicks on.:eek: They had hardened to the point where they were completely useless and a disaster waiting to happen. I ended up giving them to someone to use on a woods beater.
I have a weird attitude about driving on snow: I simply don't do it. If there is snow in the forecast, I bring my computer home and work from home.

However, here in central KY, when it does snow, they get the roads cleared pretty fast. Only on roads like the one I live on does the snow linger at all. And since it only gets one car every hour or two and is perfectly flat, I can take it very slow until I get to a maintained road.

What's kinda funny is after saying that I do remember one January helping my daughter move from South Dakota to southwest Wyoming. I drove a large Uhaul truck pulling a Uhaul trailer. When we left SD it was 32 below zero and a "ground blizzard". By the time we got to her new home two days later it was a balmy 26. I learned to love GPS because it showed me what the road ahead looked like so I could slow down for any unseen curves. Averaged about 65 all the way. About half of it was on quite icy roads.
 
I learned to love GPS because it showed me what the road ahead looked like so I could slow down for any unseen curves.
I like that on unfamiliar roads myself. When navigation also has live traffic, it helps me get around what could be quite a mess.
 
Eight years ago I bought an expensive set of Hercules Terra Trac "all terrain" for my truck. I wore out the four on the truck (at seven year mark) and still had one on the spare rim that still had the nipples on the tread and had never seen pavement and the white lettering still had the blue on it - no cracking on sidewalls - essentially looked like a brand new tire. I went back to the same guy I got the Hercs from for the new set of Michelins and I asked him if he would give me something for the unused Herc tire so I could get a new matching Michelin fifth on the spare rim. He didn't want the tire back at all explaining that even with zero wear or cracking on the tire the rubber was old. He elaborated by saying the rubber had hardened to the point of possibly being unsafe. For the record the "all terrain" Hercs absolutely sucked in the snow no traction at all so I went with proper winter tires - Michelin X-ice2's - best tires I've ever had and smooth on pavement as well with no humming sound either.
I gave up on terra tacs for the same reason they sucked in the snow.I now have motomaster at/2 which are fantastic in the snow .My problem was that i bought the p rated tires which dont hold up to off road use (6 ply) kodos to my local ctc store who are taking my 3 year old tires under warranty and replacing with the same brand but in lt which is 10 ply.Close to 700 dollar savings.Went out today and got my 3rd flat and came home on my spare which is 14 years old but at least it got me home.Had a devil of a time getting it out of the stupid underneth hidey hole .The at/2 is a rebranded cooper i just had the wrong ones for what i do which is go hunting and fishing on some pretty dirt/rock roads in the middle of nowheres where there is zero cell service atall.Many many thanks to the logging service truck who stopped to help me cut out the spare from underneeth.Also bless the boys from michigan who stopped and tried to plug the hole even though it failed.
 
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