Your last sentence says it all. The expiration date is on tires, food ect.ect. Its your choice to roll the dice.
Yeah, that's the hypocrisy showing. You'd think if this was as 'real' as they claim that would be the case. But this is all 'voluntary', there's no force of law involved that I'm aware of. The tire manufacturers cover this by stating that their warranty is only good if purchased from an authorized dealer, and the clock doesn't start ticking until its bought. The one exception I saw is from Firestone; their warranty states four years from date of purchase unless you have no receipt, then they'll extend it to five years from date of manufacture. Huh? Again, that shows that their end game is strictly to limit their liability. Once that tire is wholesaled to an 'unauthorized' dealer, they no longer care. And that guy is free to set the price.
Y'know, that brings up a couple of other interesting points. The majority of tire makers (if not all except for Firestone) start the warranty from the date of sale, not manufacture. So just how old is the tire you just bought? It's unlikely you'll get some fresh out of the factory if it's a less-popular size, so some time in a warehouse should be expected. At what point are these tires wholesaled to a second-tier retailer? After one year? Two? More? So you could conceivably have a tire well beyond the oh-so-critical six year limit, even though the warranty would extend out that far in spite of the manufacture date. Although keeping your proof-of-purchase would be critical. That six year time is looking less iron-clad... if it ever was... Second, what happens if you do have an issue covered by the warranty? If the tire is near the end of its 'timed' life, they clearly state that it will be prorated by time, not treadwear. If it has 10% of the time left, they'll discount the tire by 10%. Here's where they get tricky. Most will apply the prorate to the 'suggested retail' price, not the actual or sale price. So a tire with a suggested retail of $200, a 10% saving is $20 off that suggested retail. You may find that actual or a sale price can be lower than that $180. I've had this happen a few times where it was cheaper to ignore the warranty.
A person can twist the tire date question in many different directions. It still comes down to personal choice. How lucky do you feel? The place I buy my new tires from writes the date code of each tire on the warranty paper along with the date the tires were sold. That warranty paper also spells out what the warranty covers as far as time and tread mileage. If where you are buying your tires doesn't do that, maybe you should reconsider where you buy your tires. The last I heard, most manufacturers of nearly everything set their own guidelines as to how long and to what limitations their product warranty covers. Its been that way for years, and it is not unusual for a specific line of a product from many manufacturers having very similar warranties. It is also not unusual for manufacturers to whole sale older dated products to other companies to do what ever they choose to do with the old product, and doing so relieves the manufactures of the warranties. I find it interesting that Crazy Steve was ripping on the tire kid for telling the grandma she needed tires because they were 7 years old, because in his words 'The tires still had 70% of the tread left." My question is, did Steve inspect those tires himself? One tire was loosing air for some reason, does Steve know for a fact there were no sidewall cracks or other indications there may have actually been a real issue with the tires? I don't know the tire kids motives concerning the tire replacement, they may have been bad, but they may have been good as well. For all we know, grandma could have been His grandma, and he didn't want to see her driving around on old tires. Maybe she was moving to (or from) AZ or FL, that may be reason enough to suggest replacing the 7 year old tires. I would tell my 87 year old mother to replace 7 year old tires, the chance of a bad outcome with the old tire blowing out would be more of a concern then the cost of a set of tires. Looks like several raise questions about unqualified people only looking at the tire dates to determine the tire condition. Outside of that and also doing a tire case and thread inspection, please tell me how one is suppose to determine the condition of the tire's bonding agent, so we can determine the tires actual position in its aging process? Especially if we do not have any knowledge of the tires history? One more thing. When I was building my coupe, a friend of mine that had bought an old station wagon a few years before was going to take the wagon on a vacation. The tires on the wagon were 10 year old Michelin tires that looked great. He told me he was going to replace them simply because of the vacation and wanted to know if I wanted them for my coupe. I took them and put them on the coupe. Two years later, I was going to take the coupe on a vacation and would be putting 1000 miles on the car. The tires still looked great, and drove great, but I decided to replace them before my vacation. Had I not been going on vacation with the car, I probably would have kept using them. I had a friend was was really interested in those tires, so I gave them to him and he put them on something and used them for at least another year (maybe longer). The point is, my friend replaced them before going on a trip, and I replaced them before going on a trip, my other friend used them around town. Each of Us used those tires as long as we felt OK with it, but facing the probability of going 1,000 + miles on them at highway speeds exceeded our comfort level, so we replaced the tires.
The previous part of this story is that the shop did a tire repair on a 10 plus year old tire just prior to telling gramdma her 7 year old tires should be replaced. @Crazy Steve seems to have the wrong end of the stick here. It is the repair of the 10 year old tire that he should be concerned about. At least focus on what is actually being done wrong. I agree totally. A visual inspection just won't always pick up the potential for failure. Safest way would be to........ummmmmm.......let's see........... implement a service life for the tires.
I don't want either end of the stick.... And a point of clarification... I did go look at her tires after she went inside with the salesman. I used to be in that racket, I'm not a novice. I didn't see anything wrong with them. As to 'Grandma', I made small talk with her while we both waited. She was a just-retired state worker and that wasn't her grandkid. She made the comment "I don't remember tires wearing out in 15 thousand miles" and further said those were the OEM tires. Seems she rode the bus to work mostly, and the car was always garaged. She only came in because the TPMS light was on. I'm just an observer, I kept my mouth shut...
Being in "That Racket" also, many times on a visual inspection you will see the checking or dry rot cracks and many times they are not visible to the eye. I have also only seen the cracking or checking on the outside sidewall or only the inside sidewall or only in between the threads on the top side of the tire . If you removed all the tires off granny's car and inspected them you stood a better chance of helping her. Then again as said before sometimes you cant see the cracks or checking. So the tire kid gave her the best and safest advise using the date code.
All the tires I supply to Grandma (my mother in law), in her eighties, are no doubt out of date. her car is also old enough to have no air bags. All the cars in the family fleet get "good used" tires. I guess I'm just heartless.
The Jalopy Journal
