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How old is too old for tires?
 

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dfcas
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 2815
Location: hillbilly heaven

12/29/12 7:27 AM

How old is too old for tires?

I have some cross tires I bought way back in '99 but only used a few times. I thought about mounting them for winter but am kind of afraid of them tearing apart and stranding me. Are 13 year old tires too old?

My instinct is to throw them out but I'm havig a hard time doing that..

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ErikS
Joined: 19 May 2005
Posts: 8337
Location: Slowing boiling over in the steamy south, Global Warming is real

12/29/12 8:34 AM

Are they cracking or delaminating or shiny? Ditch them


Did they still have the milky white stuff on them that tires get when they sit unused? Yes, use them. The rubber is still good.

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walter
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 4391
Location: metro-motown-area

12/29/12 9:49 AM

related thought: long-term tyre storage

rubber deteriorates and at the same time i like to load up on great tires when they're on sale.

so i fold up my foldeables (clinchers and tubies) and do the triple-loop bundle on wire-beads then wrap each item in several layers of clear saran-wrap. i have a massive roll of wrap from costco in the workshop for various non-wifey-sanctioned uses.

minimizes storage space requriements, brings static deterioration to nil, and can still easily visually ID what i've got.

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Dave B
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 4511
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

12/29/12 12:15 PM

Storage conditions have a lot to do with how long tires last. Kept in the dark, away from temperature extremes (particularly heat) and away from electric motors they can last a long time.

Inspect yours for crazing, or tread and sidewall cracking and separation. If none of these are present, give them a try. Even if the tread and sidewall rubber is a bit compromised, the synthetic casing should still be sound.

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dddd
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 3345
Location: NorCal

12/29/12 2:45 PM

I apply a different standard depending on how heavy the rider is, i.e. how high of a pressure is to be used.

I know from experience that aged tires are more likely to have the outer ply (which overlaps under the tread) de-laminate and result in an "outer-ply failure", characterized by a slanted bulging and an "S" bend along the centerline of the tread.
Sidewalls also often suffer from exposure and weakening after the very thin rubber coating seemingly evaporates over time. Again, this results in outer-ply failure.

Myself, I have had top reliability with somewhat-aged tires that are run around 95psi for the 23mm size.
Note that a wider tire casing necessitates lower pressure as the tension force in the casing is proportional not only to the pressure but also to the width of the tire!
Note also that I don't use any tires with the sparkly, irridescent look of a dried outer sidewall ply.

I just finished off my big supply of older Ritchey WCS tires over the course of the two cx series I contested this Fall, and in this case the casings proved tough but the tread chipped away at an alarming rate, so tread life is another thing that's affected by aging.

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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2625
Location: Canberra, Australia

12/29/12 3:36 PM

I've found that stored tyres deteriorate considerably more rapidly when stored in my garage, where temperatures go over 100F in summer, than when kept in my storeroom, which stays fairly cool year round. I've got tyres I've had in the storeroom for over a decade and they don't seem to have deteriorated at all, whereas the rubber on a tyre stored for half that long in the garage will have noticeably started to perish.

The longest I've had a tyre before using it is almost 20 years. In the early 1980s, when folding bead touring tyres weren't available, in order to carry a spare to take with us while touring, I collapsed a wire bead tyre into three rings (as shown here: http://www.truewheelers.org/mechtips/index.htm ) and wrapped it up in duct tape. It got carried around like that on our annual cycling holidays for almost 20 years before I finally needed to use it, and when I unwrapped the duct tape, it seemed in pretty much perfect condition.

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Matthew Currie
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 800
Location: Vermont

12/29/12 5:49 PM

A few years ago I had some older vintage tires I got somewhere, Specialized I think. They were new, and showed no sign of age, and rode really well. But when I hit a grade crossing a sidewall blew out, and it was clear that the fabric casing had deteriorated invisibly. Don't know whether this is usual, but thought I would throw it in.l

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KerryIrons
Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Posts: 3234
Location: Midland, MI

12/29/12 8:04 PM

Age testing

The way to check for rubber deterioration is to flex the tread while looking at it closely. If you see lots of cracks when you flex it then the rubber has been oxidized and is brittle. It will wear quite quickly in normal use and will give less traction. Even without seeing the cracks (called crazing) the rubber may well have hardened some - this is why race teams age their tires so the rubber will toughen up a bit.

Mathew's sidewall blowout was not likely from age. Tire casing materials are not really going to age like that except in extreme circumstances.

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Brian Nystrom
Joined: 26 Jan 2004
Posts: 5094
Location: Nashua, NH

12/30/12 10:06 AM

As others have said, it's all in how they're stored

I'm still working through a batch of tubulars I purchased ~15 years ago. Unless tires are showing signs of cracking/dry rot, they're generally fine.

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19063
Location: PDX

12/30/12 10:17 AM

I bought a Trek 620 with a box of parts yesterday, thus the thread timing is perfect. Some tires in the box include Avocet 30 Folding. No idea of age, and always wanted to try them out. One tire in there is a folding 28C Specialized Touring Turbo. Maybe a good trainer tire ?

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Matthew Currie
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 800
Location: Vermont

12/30/12 11:08 AM

I'm guessing bad storage or bad material or both for the tires in question. They were unused from a yard sale. Looked and rode fine, but after my sidewall event I took them off and I could hear the fabric tearing when I pulled on it.

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dfcas
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 2815
Location: hillbilly heaven

12/30/12 6:38 PM

I plan to mount them and moderately over inflate them and see what happens. If they hold up OK I'll reduce them down to about 65psi for general road use and take my chances.

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dddd
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 3345
Location: NorCal

1/1/13 4:46 PM

"...I took them off and I could hear the fabric tearing when I pulled on it."

I think what you may have heard was the wire bead twisting within the aged fabric/rubber that surrounds it. That's a very good test for an internally-aged tire. It makes quite a crackly racket as the tire is flexed or twisted.

One more warning about aged tires, but only of the less-than-top quality tires that are in-mold vulcanised and thus have a feather edge of rubber extending along the bead.
The feather-edge is knife-sharp, and when hardened by age will slice your fingers like a razor blade.
Don't ask me how I know, but learned this while carrying them home from a garage sale and have also "noticed" this while changing many an old tire.

The better-quality tires have a fabric chafer strip wrapped 180-degrees around the bead to protect the very thin and highly-stressed casing fabric that is also wrapped around the beads. This fabric seems to be glued on rather than vulcanized, and the glue gets dry and crispy long before the rubber in the rest of the tire. As such, the crackly sounds from the bead area are an EARLY warning of internal tire aging.

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