Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Acceptable age of truck tires?

So I've got an older Jeep Wrangler at my house right now that I'm fixing up. Not really driving it much, except around the neighborhood. The tires are some nice 33x12.50/15 Firestone Destination MTs with maybe 7,000-8,000 miles on them and no appreciable wear. However, they are about 13-14 years old. This jeep has done a lot of sitting in storage over the last 10 years. One tire is showing some very slight spiderweb cracking on the inner sidewall, while all have some hairline cracking around the edges of the tread blocks. Considering how squirrely a lifted Wrangler would be if a blowout occurred at highway speeds, I'm thinking I need to ditch these things before doing much highway driving. Seems like a shame, as they look practically new otherwise and they're $220 tires.....

So am I right in thinking that 13 years is getting old, regardless of mileage?

If you value your ass at more than a six pack over $900;00 I'd replace them, sell them to some one for off road use.

I'm inclined to agree.....

Good idea on the offroad use. Bet somebody would want them for a camp truck that doensn't see paved roads.

Shelf life of a passenger car tire is 6yrs. I had a 7yo Michelen LTX come apart at the sidewall.

Once they start cracking/dry rotting, they are done. The will come apart once hot. I've done this... If it was low speed off road use and you didn't mind the hassle of an untimely blowout, you could run them until the casings shed their treads or you tore a sidewall.

+1

Sunlight, UV rays, breaks down the rubber. In northern climates or if the car is stored in a garage you can get more years out of them. The number I see most often is about 6 years, but under the right conditions I might keep them longer.

In this case I think I'd set them go.

Those don't sound like "$220.00 tires" to me. I'd chit can them. It's a shame you don't drive that jeep more. In fact, letting a vehicle sit for long periods of time like that is more than just hard on the tires. It's hard on mechanical parts and rubber seals etc...

New ones are $220...haha, but I get what you mean.

And the Jeep wasn't always mine. If it had been, I'd have been driving it instead of parking it in a barn for months/years at a time.

A lot of guys forget the age of their trailer tires. A 10 yo tire with only 1000 miles is just waiting to blow on the highway.

If they have cracks in them, get rid of them. Tires are cheaper than your life.

Yup. Changed them on my camper last year for that very reason.

I drive truck for a living. Nothing pleasures m e more than seeing A-holes on their phone on holiday weekends with a blown boat/travel/car trailer tire. When haul ANY car trailer i don't leave without my mini floor jack and a battery operated impact. I blew a tire on a car trailer at the base of Mont Eagle a few years ago and was back sailing in 15 minutes. I have a friend in trailer repair and he charges $1'000's to people who don't ever have their bearings re-packed and burn spindles. I re-pack trailer bearings yearly and as said before never leave the house without a spare, floor jack and impact. It's your own damn fault if u don't maintain your trailers and their tires. "Hell i been backing this boat trailer in the water for 5 years and nothing has happened yet!" runs through my mind a lot when I see them. All u gotta do to make tires live is seriously put something like Black magic/Armor All on them or the like and keep them out of the sun (garage or cover them with anything) and they will live forever. let me tell you I believe it's a rule that if your family is sitting on the side of the road and u can't fix a tire issue you need to turn in your man card and I mean officially for a while. I couldn't imagine looking my wife in the face and telling her " I dunno"..... Over a tire issue on a trailer.

It damned well should be.

very good advise there....

yeah I always carry a floor jack in my trailer on trips, and always have a pair of spares...even if just to get ya to the tire shop to replace it with a trailer tire.

being cheap on tires, is sort of like George Carlin's take on Motorcycle helmets....

Buy a $10 helmet if you have a $10 head....

Another vote for chit canning them. I had the opposite problem, let my son drive my truck last year commuting to college and in 9 months and ~10k miles he wore a new set of tires to the casing. I know, set of tires is way cheaper than out of state college but I've never seen a set of tires worn so fast.

Any truck that can wear out a set of tires in 10k needs a thorough going over to find out why. That's not normal and something caused it.

Manufacturers claim that tires have a shelf life of 7 years.

I had a 10 year old tire throw rubber on me last year. It did $1000 worth of damage to the fender well before it came off. I had to drive 15 miles on the still inflated casing to find someone with a cutting torch. Who ever rotated the tires didn't put my padlock key to the spare back where it was suppose to be.

Heck, we are still using a homemade trailer my grandfather built using trailer house axles and the tires are at least 30 years old plus. It rarely sees pavement but they do still roll.

19 y/o driver, turbo diesel and a heavy application of gravel on our road during the winter.

In ~130k I'd worn out three sets of tires, nothing changed other than the driver for the last ~10k miles.

Kids...sheesh!

Replace them. I had the side wall blow out on an 8 year old LTX. Fortunately, it started wobble so I was stopped when it blew out. I'm not sure it would have been controllable at highway speeds.

If it was my kid, he'd get the bill.

On a jeep I would run them until I saw a problem. Any little flaw will show up in the ride quality of the jeep. Old tires get bumps in them as they begin to come apart. The tire will start bouncing and you will know it in a jeep. Drive them for a while, Or build a trailer to run them on. Tires are too damn expensive to toss unless they are truly bad.

14 year old tires are indeed 'truly bad' for anything except low speed off road farm use.

I bought a used F250 a couple years ago. The tires had ~50% tread left, and I saw no visible signs of cracking. After driving 200 miles of my 400 mile trip home on the freeway at ~70MPH the left rear blew, luckily minimal damage to the wheel well and fender, but it scared the sh1t out of me.

After I checked the date codes on all the tires they were all over 10 years old, and the spare looked original with a date code matching the year of the truck ~14 years. This left me in the middle of the desert at dusk, and it took two hours for a tow truck to arrive so I could then tow it to a friend's house 100 miles away. And the next morning another 100 mile tow home. AAA Plus is worth every penny, as it only cost me $20 out of pocket for going a few miles over 100 on the first leg.

A spare will age out as well as the driven tires will. Unless they have a directional tread, you're better off to use a 5 tire rotation scheme. That will also add 20% to the life of your tires so you're not really out anything. It just costs more at longer intervals.
It's also a good way to make sure your spare tire carrier works right.

I bought my '08 pickup 4 years ago and it also has the original spare that's never been used. I'll need new tires next year and will likely replace all 5 and go to the 5 tire rotation.

The problem with a 5 tire rotation is most trucks these days don't come with a matching wheel on the spare. Heck, many don't come with even the same size wheel. If the wheels match it works out, but I don't worry too much about it otherwise.

I hadn't thought about that. Other than checking the winch, I've never had the spare off of mine to see just what it does have.

Yeah, you usually have to hunt ebay for a spare matching wheel to do the 5-tire rotation. My spare wheel on the Jeep matches the rest, so I bought 5 Dick Cepek Extreme Country radials. Got them delivered for $893 from Jegs, which I thought wasn't too shabby (33x12.50/R15).