Technical WWW Replacement

Hey all, I was having a conversation with a mechanic buddy the other day, and he flatly informed me that my WWW, regardless of how new they still seem, MUST be replaced after X amount of years.

We bought these BF Goodrich WWW in 2018, and they still show lots of tread. After 8 years in, I find it hard to fathom replacing them already.

How about everyone else? How often (or not) do you change your WWW regardless of age?

 

Are they bias ply or radials? Is the car kept in a garage or exposed to the elements?

 

Really, my thoughts are skewed but here ya go.

Radial Tires!
I would be cautious at 8 years old. I know it's probably not been in the elements, and they probably show no dry rot.
The main issue people get into with older tires is tread separation and dry rot cracks. And most shops won't touch older tires with a 10 foot pole. So, if you get a nail in it and try to get it repaired or balanced, they won't do anything for you.

Run to 10 years if you drive the hell out of freeway flying.

If you stay local, low speeds and occasionally drive it 50 miles then you will probably be fine to 12 to 15 yr range.

Bias ply, is all on tread separation. I have seen 50 yr old tires still going but are hard as bricks.

 

My WWW radials that were on my 56 when I got it came apart at about 12 years old. I had another set on my Thunderbird that got lumps in them at similar age. The bias plies on my 51 are likely 25-30 years old and fine…

 

Ignore the whitewalls....instead, look at the manufacturing date and the construction. They sure look like radials, and getting to that age they'll come apart some time...no one knows when.

 

Radials, kept inside the garage other than cruising of course....

 

Appreciate the insight! We drive it...a lot. Road trips and local, pretty much from April until November, almost daily.

 

Appreciate the insight! I was always in favor of radials..had no idea the bias plys last longer??

 

Interesting, I will take a look at the dates. Never thought about that actually..

 

Avatar had a set of WWW radials a few years ago with about 20,000 miles and nearly 13 years old but looked great. Stored in a dark garage when not being driven. Went down to the Lone Star Roundup with a buddy and made the mistake of bragging about them on the way. Pulled into my parking place at the show and a knot had come up on the RR. On the way back home after dark I threw all the tread off the LF tire at 70 mph. Punched out the headlight bucket with bulb and headlight ring and lost a '57 Cadillac hubcap somewhere on the dark highway. Lessons learned: 1) 7 to 8 years max life on radials. 2) Don't brag in front of radials about their age.

 

Ever see the damage a tire does to body work when they come apart? If the tread separates from the case, it becomes a snake that beats to death everything it can reach.

Aged radial tires have a history of coming apart, regardless of how they may look. A radial tire has "belts" (usually 2 belts) that wrap around the tire under the tread. Those "belts" are what keeps the radial tire thread flat to the road surface. When you go around a corner too hard, the sidewall on a radial flexes and the tread surface remains mostly flat, a bias ply tire usually keeps the sidewall straight, and the tread flexes (that is why bias tires wear out faster then radial tires do). The issue is, the bonding agent that holds the the belts under the tread to the tire case breaks down through heat, age and usage. The "belted" radial tires have 2 or more additional belts between the tread and the tire case, those extra belts compound the problem with the bonding agent.
The tire companies say 5 years is pushing your luck, even if they look like new. I'd say if the look good, and your not doing highway speeds, 10 years is really pushing it. If your driving it at highway speeds, the time bomb is getting real close at 7-8 years. If you happen to be that guy that likes to take hard, fast, corners, that 5 years the tire companies recommend may be about right.

I had a late 70s car (back in the early 90s) that had a rear tire loose 1/2 of the tire tread in less then 30 seconds. That swinging tread took out the entire rear quarter, blew apart the entire inner wheel well, even damaged the trunk lid when it came apart at 70 mph, without any warning. All of that in the short few seconds it took to get the car stopped. That tire showed no signs of having any kind of problem before it came apart, no vibrations, no wobble, nothing before the bang and the tread beating on the side of the car! After inspecting the tire afterwards, I still had no idea what caused the tire problem, even with 1/2 the tire tread torn loose from the tire case, it still was not low on air pressure. At the time I was working at a new car dealership, none of the other guys had any idea what caused the problem. That car was a beater, I ended up junking it because of the body damage.

You may be the lucky guy that gets 15 years out of your old radial tires. The question is, how long are you willing to take a chance of destroying the body work on your car before you change the old tires?

 

Gene...it's "tread", not "thread"

 

Tire companies say 6 years, although they're in the business of selling tires and covering their ***. Kinda like how the diamond industry decided everyone needs to spend 3 months wages on a diamond.

There's also a big difference between a tire that's on a vehicle parked outside in the New Mexico sun and one that's in a garage with no sunlight most of the time. Still, for me 10 years is pretty much the maximum on a radial tire before I get nervous, even in Wisconsin with basically windowless garages. I swapped out several tires over the last couple of years just due to age, not due to cracking or any other issues, and I probably should do a few more this year.

 

Some say 10 years is it for radials
Mileage is irrelevant
Bias seem to live longer age wise but wear faster.

the solution is to drive em more and replace due to wear.

 

I try to park the radial tires in the tallest weeds, give em some shade.

 

Yikes, that's something my buddy warned me about. Granted the car stays inside whenever possible, but we put A LOT of miles on each year. I'm sketched out that something might happen now....

 

Thanks for the info, and I can really start to see the reality of this. Crazy, I had never thought twice before. I'd run "take offs" my dad had saved from the dealership he worked at and I ran those without a care. Now, though, I'm starting to see the reality!

 

We have two long distance runs we were planning on doing this year, and now I'm not sure what to do. The funds are a little short, trying to get my wife's OT pickup ready this summer, so I was hoping for next year for new WWW. However, after everyone's input, I may need to beg, borrow or steal (just kidding) to get new WWW this summer!

 

I'm going to hit 8 years in June. I want to trust them at least this year, but jeez! They say paranoia is a form of heightened awareness.....

 

Working with this stuff everyday I must say something, now can I back it up with scientific proof ? No....

I've noticed some things in the last couple years when it comes to tires. Every since covid hit and people went to staying home and businesses closed or slowed down production, too me and what I've seen tire manufacturing has gotten poorer.

We've (where I work) seen more tire failures, more separation, less mileage out of tires. The rubber seems "softer" and we've noticed that a lot of the tires we preferred are now some of the tires we shy away from.

Sidewalls seem softer too pretty much across the board.

Now the question is..... is it because of cut backs during covid ? Or is it because tire companies have been pushing the change your tires every 6 yrs and they have cheapened the tires to last only that long? Are they finally building in that "planned obsolescence" ?

So I'm weary of any tire built since covid being ran for a long period of time...

..

 

To Lostone's point.... Had a very interesting conversation not long ago with a long time employee of Carlisle Tire. They have a big plant about 15 miles from my town, plus a couple of other big manufacturing plants in the USA. They are still making industrial tires,etc., but I don't believe they are still making p***enger car tires anymore.
He told me, in detail, that all tire formulas have changed in recent years, all of them, without exception, if a tire company wants to sell anything in the European Union. Current tires must degrade quicker when their service life is over, as the EU doesn't like tires in landfills lasting forever. High end, low end, hot **** tire companies have all done this, IF THEY INTEND TO SELL TIRES IN THE EU. He said that Carlisle's golf cart tires, their heavy equipment tires, all of them use different rubber formulas now.
He's a 37 year employee of Carlisle, and was very credible, in my opinion. Since i own a bicycle shop, I asked him if that applied to my tires. Again, he said if they're being sold in the EU, then yes.
I did do a little googling after he left. Yep.

 

7 1/2 years I feel like I could live with that, that's not too bad yet.

 

Thanks, I appreciate your input. I might try this year and see. I honestly was considering postponing an 800 mile round trip to the Radium car show in September until I sort out the tire issue, but maybe I can still make it this year...

 

Where do you live? That has considerable bearing on tire aging, but even that isn't the whole story.

All this 'tire age' BS came out of the Ford Explorer/Firestone fiasco in the late '90s. People got killed and everybody started waving lawyers around, so the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did a study on tire age as that was one unknown factor. It was known that heat and UV exposure degraded rubber, but how much and how fast? So the NHTSA performed their study in Phoenix Arizona, an urban area with the highest average daily temps. At the end of the day, all they offered was a recommendation that you have your tires checked at six years by a technician to see if they needed replacing. The tire/auto manufacturers followed suit, with 6 to 10 year recommendation times. Once it got to the retailers, then it became mandatory for replacement if it was 'expired' to avoid any possible litigation (and PS, they sell tires, surprise surprise...). If you go to a tire store, the first thing they'll check is the tire age and if it's past whatever age number they're using, you're buying a new tire, no matter how it looks.

I read the original preliminary report which contained all of the testing data, both real-world and laboratory. Two things stuck out. One, heat/UV exposure aging was exponential. In other words, the higher the heat/UV, the faster the tire aged. If you live in Phoenix (or other places in the sunbelt), 6 years is the number. But drop that number by 20% and the aging rate drops by 75%. Two, the NHTSA also checked all 50 states accident reports for three years and couldn't find even one do***entable tire failure due to age, in spite of all the antidotal stories floating around. All of this was deleted from the final report you'll now find. As to the brouhaha that started all this, it was finally determined that Ford asked for a lighter-weight tire to improve ride quality and Firestone cheapened it too far, along with Ford's recommended too-low inflation pressure (again, to improve ride quality) is what killed them, with high operating temps in the sunbelt contributing. Nearly all of these failures occurred in the sunbelt or under overload.

Bottom line IMO? If they look good, they are good. Do make sure you run adequate pressure; I won't go lower than 28 PSI depending on the actual size and load on the tire. But tires will occasionally fail, I've had a couple, but these were relatively new, three years or less. I inspect my tires annually, you should too.

 

What is an extra "h" a**** friends?
At least I was consistent, after I added the first extra "h", I added it every time. I think I have corrected it now... But no promises.

 

Last summer on my wife’s car, a six year old radial literally blew up while parked in the driveway. A big chunk of the sidewall flew off.

 

Trailer tires are a whole nuther can of worms. Seems they go bad after about 3 years on my car trailer. But they do have to deal with a lot more scrubbing action, trying to pull the tread off sideways, when you go around a corner. Helps to keep them fully inflated.

 

I had a brand new never on the ground 16" load range E radial tire mounted as a spare on my 5th wheel. I always kept it at max PSI rating. One day for no apparent reason it exploded. It took out a rear window and a roof marker light. Probably would have killed me or f'd me up badly if I had been standing there. Only thing I can figure is that the tire faced west without a cover and the heat raised the tire pressure and caused it to explode. Or not. After that I always removed the tire, reduced the air pressure and kept in the shop until I used the trailer.

 

how old was it? Aging starts when it's made, not when you first make it roll...