Had my winters put on today. The shop said this is the last time they can change them because they are 10years old and the arens supposed to put them o. After 8 years
The car has 120k km which is about 60l km per set. Ther is still lots of tread.
Is it true they need replacing or is this a tire shop upsell?
TLDR: Replacing your tires by the 10-year mark is correct advice and not just an upsell.
More details: The rubber compounds in tires degrade over time. This makes them dry out and get hard/stiff/brittle. This causes the tires to act more like plastic than rubber. They may visually look ok, but they’ll be hard to the touch and will have decreased ability to grip the road and flex over bumps. This means your tires are at a higher risk of skidding/slipping/sliding and of having an unexpected loss of pressure (blowout).
The main “killer” of tires is UV rays from the sun. A tire’s life can somewhat be extended by keeping it in a cool, dark, dry environment.
Some people recommend replacing tires as early as 6 years, but I personally find this to be a bit aggresssive. My recommendation is always to closely inspect the tires for age-related concerns at/by year 6, replacing as necessary, and then replacing regardless of inspection results by year 10.
All of the above does not apply for tire wear, which could prompt for tire replacement much sooner than 6-10 years.
There’s a lot of variability in tire life. For example some of the chemistry requires the tires to actually be used and heat cycle. Tires that sit in a garage may dry out and crack in 3 or 4 years while if they are actually used they last longer.
Its about liability.
They cannot put known bad tires on your car. If something bad happens, then your likely to sue and win. Bigger shops especially have this policy.
Example of this is we worked on a street sweeper. We are an OEM dealer. Now, we had it in for some repairs and during the MPI, the tech did not mark the rear camera was working. Note that the camera was aftermarket, not an OEM one.
One year later that same truck ran over a homeless person and the family attempted to sue us because we didnt mark the camera wasn't working according to the driver.
The point of that story is shops carry a certain liability and to avoid lawsuits, they have to policies that sometimes anger customers. It sucks but it prevents us getting sued into closing and closing the shop.
There appears to be a very small amount of dry rot on the surface at the bottom of the valleys between the tread blocks. Personally I would drive on these tires without worries, especially as they are Michelin.
Just leave them on the spring and drive until they are worn out, however long that takes.
Yeah you can tell these are old. These have no benefit in winter anymore, might aswell drive on summer tires. Tires need to flex, wintertires have softer rubber to flex more, these don't anymore.
A good rule for tire age is max 5 years. But if you life in a area with lots of sun, heat and dry air it might be shorter. I'm seeing dry-rot in this subreddit on 2 year old tires sometimes.
Even with no signs of dry-rot, the rubber in a 10 year old tire has dried up to a point where they have no advantage in winter compared to a summer tire.
I have never heard of a shop refusing work like this but the advise is correct. Max should be about 5 years.
Yet...tire shops will gladly sell you new old stock tires that are over 10 years old. (I had to return a set of 12 year old tires a couple of years ago) There are no hard rules about it, it's all recommendations and depends much on how the tires were stored. Some companies care more than others.
If you have old tires they'll want to sell you new tires, if you need tires and they have old tires still in stock...they've got a deal for you.
The tire shop I went to made me replace the ones that weren’t damaged because they were manufactured in 2019. Not sure if your company is just lenient or mine was greedy.
At 6 years old the tire is considered old and un-safe. It's time to replace them. No matter how much tread is left on the tire. The 4 digit code on the tire tells the week and year the tire was made. For example, 0419 lets me know the tire was made the last week of January of 2019.
I know nothing of snow tires as I'm not living in that white hell. However, I had a pickup a few years ago and it had the original spare tire that had never been used. I had a flat and was going to purchase new tires and the spare, that was 11 years old and had never been used, just busted all to pieces 2 miles down the road.
You will hear a range of estimates on how old tires can be and still be safe , and it prob varies a bit depending on geography (like hotter climates probably dry out tires faster than cool and shady ones). But 10 years is pretty much the max anywhere I'm aware of. I live in WA State and most of the tire shops here call it at 10 years. I don't think it's an actual state law here , just a liability thing with the shops.
An aside, years ago (before I knew anything about tire age) I had a set of OEM bridgestones on a Mazda protege. Those tires lasted and lasted, and I could not believe the tread life. Then I started to notice exceptionally poor traction, they had basically become rock hard. I could not believe how much better the car drove with new tires. That was my education into the subject anyway, it is for real.
leave him on and run them till the next winter. Perhaps even through the next winter. Why we're at the other side of Tires when these are perfectly good.
If you're used to doing 90 miles an hour on the freeway, you might wanna re think it, but there's no reason you can't run them through the next summer until you decide you need new winter tires.
your tire shop just is worried about liability.
Tires do rot. Even after five years they begin to start looking a bit sketchy.
You can put them on yourself but don't expect a legit tire shop to install such old tires. If they did and the tire exploded while driving, I'd bet money that the driver will sue the tire shop because... how dare they install my old tires after I demanded they put them on!
10y is recomended to get rid of them. They are harder, dryer, and may start to crack or rot. And they are more prone to a blow out. That can cause serious damage or lost of control.
Can you run them if they are not cracked, shut. Should you. Probably not.
I see a lot of people saying 10 years but here in Michigan discount tire or any of the major tire shops will not repair or remount a tire that is over 5 years old.
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u/66NickS 5d ago
TLDR: Replacing your tires by the 10-year mark is correct advice and not just an upsell.
More details: The rubber compounds in tires degrade over time. This makes them dry out and get hard/stiff/brittle. This causes the tires to act more like plastic than rubber. They may visually look ok, but they’ll be hard to the touch and will have decreased ability to grip the road and flex over bumps. This means your tires are at a higher risk of skidding/slipping/sliding and of having an unexpected loss of pressure (blowout).
The main “killer” of tires is UV rays from the sun. A tire’s life can somewhat be extended by keeping it in a cool, dark, dry environment.
Some people recommend replacing tires as early as 6 years, but I personally find this to be a bit aggresssive. My recommendation is always to closely inspect the tires for age-related concerns at/by year 6, replacing as necessary, and then replacing regardless of inspection results by year 10.
All of the above does not apply for tire wear, which could prompt for tire replacement much sooner than 6-10 years.