Tire DOT date stamp
About 2 months ago I purchased tires, Yokohama 008R's, from a
reputable brand-name tire dealer in Mountain View. Recently
I read an article on tires that talked about tire age. The
article went on to say that there is a DOT time stamp on all
passenger car tires that records the week and the year that the
tire was manufactured. The DOT number on the sidewall is about
10 characters long with the last 3 digits recording the date. The
last digit is the year and the two digits before it is the week
of the year. DOT AFD78HG401 is a tire manufactured on the 40th
week of 1991. So I ran out to my triumph an looked at the time
stamp on my brand new 008Rs. They were made on the 20th week of
1987! The article I read considered anything older than 4 years
to be old. These recently purchased, brand new tires are 5 and
1/2 years old! My understanding is that rubber gets hard with
age. This is why people get 80K miles on their 10 year old
tires. My tires seem sticky enough but I am concerned that next
year I'll be faced with a dry-rot problem. Any comments.
Dave Brady
dbrady@synoptics.com
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