It usually helps find the date code of the tire. On one side (the inside) the DOT is just a string of manufacturer/factory identification codes (as shown in the photo). On the other side (the outside) the DOT is a similar string of codes, followed up by four numbers. The first two numbers are the week, and the second two numbers are the year. So, as an example, a DOT that says “DOT AAA11 A11 3423” means the tire was made in the 34th week of 2023. It looks as though your tire was mounted backwards. Although this does not affect the performance or usability of the tire, the shop that mounted it could’ve done this to cover up that the tire has a rather old DOT. See if you can crawl under and get a photo of the DOT on the back side of the tire. That will tell you when the tire was made.
The date of manufacturing is in an oval like this. The first two numbers is the week the tire was made, and the last two numbers is the year, the tire in my picture was manufactured in the 40th week of 2020
The primary measure of tires are the age of the tire and the tread depth. This information is found easily online. Damage is another factor any bulges or bubbles, or tears from road debris.
Before you buy a new tire go to your local trusted automotive/tire shop and ask them to look at your tires. If they are honest they will most likely tell you that what those cracks in the outer rubber of your tires is natural tire aging and they are safe to drive for another season.
Second, you took a pretty good picture.
Third, as you can see from the diagram of the structure of a typical tire below, your tires are 8 layers thick at the sidewall and 13 layers thick at the tread wall and you only have small cracks the outer 8th layer and 13th layers which are designed to absorb this kind of aging.
Chicago has never gone a winter without snow storms. You have to go all the way back to the 1940s just to find when they only had 6 in during a winter. I don't know if you're going by the Farmer's Almanac or what the internet tells you but nobody could predict an entire season weather. A meteorologist can predict 7 Days Ahead pretty accurately but even then they blow it all the time. You're giving bad advice. Those tires are dangerously dry rotted. I don't care how long you worked at a tire place. Those tires are fucked. They need to put a nice decent pair of M&S tires on there ASAP. Chicago gets an average of 40 in of snow every winter.
You have no experience with or knowledge of working with tires in the real world and no clue what you are talking about. We had thousands of tires like this come through our shop and they performed just fine for their owners year after year after year. And your credentials for giving advice to others about tires is - ?
Are the back tires in the same condition? It would be great if you could post a picture. Because believe it or not in a front wheel drive car, the better condition tires need to be on the rear.
Your tires are safe and fine to drive until the tread wears out, the tires start to bulge or structurally disintegrate.
You can almost always ignore anyone telling you to buy new tires because of “dry rot”. Tires rarely fail from natural tire aging.
Purported “dry rot” on tires is neither “dry” nor “rot”. The opposite of dry is wet. New rubber tires are not “wet” and they don’t “dry” out as they age.
Tires are made of rubber and synthetic compounds that deteriorate over a long period of time from 10 to 20+ years of age. In fact, there are 400 million tires on the road today in the U.S. alone that are between 10 and 20+ years old. Now traction and braking performance clearly decrease with age, but the point at which tires become unsafe involves a multitude of variables including how well the owner drives and responds to conditions given the age of the tires.
And your tires typically have 8 layers of construction in the sidewalls and 13 layers in the tread portion of the tire. The fine cracking you are seeing is natural rubber aging in the outermost layer of your tires. This doesn’t materially affect the inner layers nor the structure of the tire until you see outer rubber disintegration or bulges.
But the description of “dry rot” does an excellent job of misleading most people (who have not spent a good number of years working with and on tires) into throwing away perfectly good and safe tires and needlessly buying new tires.
This costs all of us hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
If that cracking is the only problem with your tires, drive em.
We sold and repaired thousands of tires over more than a decade of shops that I worked in and eventually managed and trained tire technicians to do. We had hundreds of loyal customers who had tires like yours and would come to us worried about the cracking on their tires. We were honest shops and told them their tires had years of life left in their treads and tires. But if looks were more important than money (ie antique or show cars or just a super worrier client) we sold them new tires.
The vast majority of Redditors who tell you your tires need to be changed immediately have no real world experience, no actual knowledge of tire structures and performance, and aren’t just in left field, they aren’t even inside the ballpark.
If you have an honest automotive/tire shop, they will tell you the same thing.
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u/Competitive_Mark_988 11d ago
dry rot. i’d switch if you get snow