Arbitrary age seems like a bit of cop-out, but...

Tyres do of course degrade over time but usually there will be evidence of crazing/cracking or even delamination.

But that is a far more subjective call - give the same very old tyre to 10 examiners and you'll likely get 11 different opinions as to it's risk of failure over the next 12 months.

Maybe a 10-year limit makes sense - I don't think I've ever had a tyre reach 10yr old. The ones on my dad's very low mileage car (~1000 miles/yr) had turned square before then (maybe 8yo iirc) and needed binned despite visibly still looking ok (until you drive it and felt as if the steering was knackered)!

 

The difference between stored tyres and tyres aging on a car is they are subjected to UV degradation in my experience. I noticed in 2019 the OE fit tyres on our 2016 Citigo were starting to crack. I asked my mechanic and he told me they were OK but to keep an eye on them. By 2022 he told me they needed replacing as they would fail an MOT. The tyres had loads of tread left, having done 16K miles only but aging had made them unsafe. Ten years doesn't seem like a bad limit to me.

 

I agree it is not a bad timescale if they were fitted new, as you say, UV and general weathering can be hard on tyres, some tyres take it worse than others. But not all are fitted straight away, and not everyone does massive mileage.

I would wager those were Michelins you are talking about? The old 'rubber rot'. They must have had some 'infected tyres' back then.

 

When we purchased our car from a main dealer 3 years ago he explained the tyres might not
look as shiny as some new cars as they no longer used tyre shine products as they were found to cause premature cracking of the sidewalls. Never researched it further but it made sense so I've never used it since.

 

I bought a full set of all season 3PMSF tyres ~8 years ago for an abandoned trip to those EU places that require it, and never used them. Stored them and they were as good as new in terms of rubber pliability and patina. I sold them off cheap to someone recently, they seemed happy with the purchase. I was going to put them on my van as that needed new tyres but I had to wait for some cheap rims to come up as my van is on the smaller rim option. Those had been advised 'cracking' and such for a couple of them for about the last 3 MoTs, and the others were too old, too.

The fitter had a bit of a battle getting them off, they were not awfully old, I think they were 15 years or so, and they'd gone hard and brittle, the bead wouldn't let go of the rim on a few of them. It had a new set fitted for the princely sum of £186.

Remoulds would help with the environmental impacts, but how would they be cheaper than virgin tyres at that price?

The spare on my Mazda had a 3 digit year code when I bought two new tyres for it last year. I kept two cheap Chinese tyres that were on it, but those will be 10 years old soon and have only done a few thousand miles. I might swap those to match the new ones, they are really crap tyres!

 

Well tyres these days are shot after like 3-4 years anyway so they'd probably be picked up by MOT long before any 10 year limit. We've talked with our tyre fitter about it, it's not just a Michelin thing... I don't recall the exact specifics but it's the compound made for ALL tyre rubber lately which causes them to crack in the sun. Seems Michelin might have been the first to comply and ended up with the reputation for it.

I think it's along similar lines to issues like lead-free solder - some kind of safety regulations that happens to make things more prone to failure and need replacing more often. A cynical mindset might think there was a motivation behind it other than safety

 

I don't recall the exact specifics but it's the compound made for ALL tyre rubber lately which causes them to crack in the sun.

I think there was a mandated shift from oils to waxes as agents to maintain flexibility in the rubber (less VOC presumably) that caused a lot of early Michelin failures as per @donald

I think they have sorted the chemistry these days though.

 

Presumably no-ones going to want remoulds either are they? Does the re-moulding process reset the clock?

 

@donald It would be a good safety measure to check the age of tyres as part of the MOT. Personally, there is no way I would run my vehicles with tyres that are older than 5-6 years old.

"However, the age and wear of the current set of tyres must also be looked at.

A simple renewal of tyres can likely mean the difference between an in-time emergency-stop and an expensive insurance claim and excess payment.

For instance, the longer a tyre has been in use, the harder the rubber would become.

This would translate into less grip with the road, especially during braking.

This is why a fresh set of tyres is grippier than an old set that still has lots of tread left."

 

I spent last weekend taking off some 20+ year old tyres from a trailer that actually looked OK. It was a breaker bar, scaffold pipe and two mates job to get the nuts off.

 

In my experience it depends on the life that the tyres have had. I bought a car that had been standing on a drive for a while......the two offside tyres were (imo) scrap due to cracking around the sidewall but the two nearside tyres which had been in the shade were fine. They were Michelins. Another car purchased had been stored inside for 11 years after having had new tryes fitted - no sign of any deterioration at all but they had flat spots. Rather than an arbitary time limit maybe cracked sidewalls or tread should be a MOT fail rather than an advisory.

 

As I recall, caravan tyres are replaced at seven years old. Not sure if it is a legal requirement or just good practice.

They typically do very few miles and do crack with age. There was a theory that tyres in regular use age better due to regular flexing.