They are a great Hwy tire. I run them at 85lbs air, yes a little rougher at that pressure but I get better mileage. Winter I throw in 6-800lbs of sand bags in the back and away I go. I have a set of cable chains behind the seat if the roads get really bad.

I chose them after much research, here on the DTR, and other On-line sources. I wanted decent traction, but also to maximize my fuel economy and have decent/good wear properties. I think these have provided me with everything I wanted.

Here's a couple pics...

 

Thanks!

 

----This is because rubber deteriorates with time. Much like the rubber band you pull off the newspaper it stretches and doesn't break. A week later you stretch it... and it breaks. Rubber dries out.

That is less than correct. The amount of stretch rubber is stored under matters a great deal. Stretch it to near break and it will live much longer than if stretched half that mount. As to the 6 years...give me a break; tires do not become unsafe after that time period on the absolute basis you claim. I got a Berkley with Michelins on it so old they were belted bias ply. Stored out of sunlight for one and they were not unhealthy.

I will be getting a pair of the BFG Commercial TA Traction for the 1990's rears. Mounting them on 16x7 Ford steels. Will report on their performance v. expectations.
cheers,
Douglas

 

we have those on the front of the 92 , they come with A LOT Of tread , they ride nice too at 65psi. at 80 they rode like crap but at 65psi It's like a cadillac.

 

te 92 has 11 year old michelins on the back of it no dry rot no cracking at all and they drive great and provide good traction.

they are XCX AP2 I think they still make them

 

Six years is the consensus.

http://www.safetyissues.com/site/tra...dangerous.html
http://thesafetyrecord.safetyresearc...uishing-in-us/
http://www.safetyresearch.net/2006/0...r-of-tire-age/
http://www.tiredefectslawyer.com/aged-tires.php
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4988518&page=1
http://www.bellas-wachowski.com/lawy...y-1325656.html
http://www.newsomelaw.com/resources/...emerging-issue
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0...life-Ford.html

How to determine a tires age.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete....jsp?techid=11

Informative video, buyer beware.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897

Good video on tire construction, wear and failure.

http://www.safetyresearch.net/safety-issues/tires/

More people will be aware at least. Make them think twice about doing 70 mph down the interstate with a family driving next to them. Going to Circle K is one thing, the interstate is another. Just know what you have for tires and what is possible.

 

Although we still call them "rubber", there has been prescious little, if any at all, actual rubber in tires in the last thirty-plus years.

Tire "rubber" is synthetic, derived from crude-oil by-products, which also is why tire prices go up right along with the crude-oil market.

The entire earth and all the planets would have to be covered in rubber trees to provide enough rubber to keep us in tires.


The short shelf-life of the adhesives that bond steel-belts inside radial tires, plus moisture intrusion rusting the steel and constant flexing breaking the steels bond with the tire casing, spell quicker doom for a radial tire than deterioration of the synthetic rubber compound.

 

Do please share the source of these facts.
cheers,
Douglas

 

The sign over the counter says "IN Business for over Fifty Years" and the sign is over five years old.

I have read, listened to, been to more tire seminars, and conversed with more tire professionals that I could begin to count.

I have seen every kind of tire failure and know from many years of actually being in the middle of the tire business just what will and will not work.

I know which companies almost always make junk and which ones seldom do.

So far as providing a college essay works-cited sheet, that I cannot --- you will just have to take my word on it.

 

I found a set of tires for my truck this summer, the guy said they were in great shape, lots of tread. I told him I'd get two for now and take the rest later if he still had them and they were as good as he said. He met me at Sears, and showed up at twilight. Couldn't see the weather checking and cracking in the outside tread rib. When he called me the next day I told him I didn't want any if they were all in that bad a shape. He got mad and said that the tread depth is all that matters. I told him we have a couple farm wagons we could use them on, but there is no way I'd put them on any truck, or give them back so he could sell them to someone else to put on a truck.

I can tell by the cracking in that rib exactly which way was up when it was sitting.

Tires that are run regularly don't dry rot as quickly. It forces the oils in the rubber to the outside of the tire where it's been drying out. But eventually they do give up.

I put a pair of Nexan Roadian AT's on the back and moved my year-old Coopers to the front. Similar tread to the coopers and they seem to grip pretty well on our dirt roads.

Just not at 75 PSI like the tire shop put in them. Wow, talk about squirrelly!

 

I was completely naive when buying the used tires. Ignorant. I actually had a picture/thought in my head of some guy with money that bought a new dually and ran his tires for 5k miles before deciding he just didn't like them, wanted to get some tires that looked mean and aggressive, and I would be the benefactor. I would be able to get some pristine, perfectly good tires that someone just didn't like.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. A tire wholesaler, who I assume bids on piles of used tires, and then resales them to the public sold me the used tires. This used tire seller has no clue where the tires have been. They/he didn't even look at them, the condition, the manufacturing date, nothing. If the tread looks good, they can sell them, period.

This tire wholesaler had set upon set of used tires. A huge lot, easily hundreds of sets and pairs. And every single tire they were selling had the equivalent of vaseline smeared all over them to hid the defects, fill in the cracks. When they sold me these tires, they were not in the sunlight so I could see any cracks. They were in a dark corner of the shop. They used the biggest bottle of tire spray I've ever seen. Somekind of industrial tire spray in a bottle four times as big as a can of spray paint. The stuff came out and foamed like oven cleaner and then settled down to a thick coating. Never seen anything like it.

These days I imagine there all types of people selling used tires. From this wholesaler to the guy who had some tires sitting in his back yard. With everyone trying to save a dollar -- not alot of people want to or can spend $800 on a new set of tires, so used tires can be very attractive -- and everyone trying to make a dollar from wholesaler guy to backyard guy who could really use the extra $$, makes for a bad combination when it comes to something arguably the most critical thing about a motor vehicle, tires. The fact that a tire can be made to "look" great to the uninformed -- you can stand there and the tire does "look" great, deep tread, nice and clean and shiney, but can be a timebomb waiting to kill you, your family or someone else and their family or destroy your truck -- makes it even worse.

 

A local junkyard near me sells lot's of used tires, they will push in the bead and check for cracks. Quite a few people buy used tires these days it seems.

 

Along with selling lots of new tires, we also sell lots of used tires.

Were it up to me, I would slash the sidewall of every used tire that hit our floor; they are nothing but a big problem and a time waste.

For every one that we sell/install and it does fine, there are at least five that we have to take back and either refund money or find another used tire to try again.


Like I already said, tires get taken off for a reason, usually because the original owner has been having some sort of issue that has brought them in search of new tires in the first place.


Against my ideas and wishes, we pick through and resell ANYTHING that even looks like it might last two trips across a corn-field on a gravity-bed at slow speed.

That being said, required by federal law, we have an EPA-licensed company pick up all of our junk tires, and believe me they are definitely JUNK.


We have to pay a minimum of $3/tire to have these junk tires hauled away and the bigger the tire the more it costs.

This company then sells these tires in container-load lots to various used tire dealers, who then resell what of them that they can.

I have observed poor old financially stressed people spend way more money in the long run than they would have spent had they just bought new tires.

In my area, it is very common to put more dollars worth of tires on a car than the car with the new tires would bring at the local auto-auction; we have a lot of poor people around here --- really poor.

 

I agree used tires are a pain I work at a vw dealer and the only used tires I want toa mess with are new car take offs. Dry rot bad belts featering and underinflation make it not worth digging up a set and then they complain about the ride.... and as far as selling em folks will pass off anything on md craigslist a guys got 4 bfg ats for sale with plugs in the sidewall!!

 

this is all very interesting but where does it leave auto and truck restoration in all of this. I have some tires on one of my restored autos that read 4601 and it doesn't mean 2001 as those tires have been on the car for over 15 years and it most likely has less than 3500 miles on it since they were put on new .They look new feel new and have not been out in the weather much . Yes it is a hanger queen yes a climate controlled queen too . yes it does see rain and mud .I drive it hard when I do drive it .The tires are a valuable part of the car history and restoration .They have tubes in them but are radials and are on a wire wheel hence the factory tubes . Could it be that liability laws in the US are also driving this six year statement .
lots of classic trucks and autos have old tires that also used similar glues and exterior rubber grades . they are radials too Remember pollyglass radials no metal .it is interesting that all facts (not those on this web site)are from persons who can make and loose larges sums of money from this policy. what does the society of engineers think ..........