Morris Minor Owners Club

Christmas and Birthday came together this week in the shape of 4 145 R14 Bridgstones fitted and balanced at £62 each from Ctyres as advised by somebody on here. Skinny but better than the 155 R14 Firestones which felt wooden and although not badly cracked they were 30 years old (DOT marking 484 = week 48 of 1984!). The grip of the aged rubber was poor and I'm not sure what the insurance company would have thought in the event of an accident. Is this a record or is anybody running round on older tyres? To check, the code follows on from DOT, usually on the inside of the tyre, explanation below:
"A three-digit code was used for tyres manufactured before 2000. So for example 17 6 means it was manufactured in the 17th week of 6th year of the decade. In this case it means 1986. For tyres manufactured in the 90's, the same code holds true but there is a little triangle after the DOT code. So for this example, a tyre manufactured in the 17th week of 1996 would have the code 176triangle. After 2000, the code was switched to a 4-digit code. Same rules apply, so for example 3 0 0 3 means the tyre was manufactured in the 30th week of 2003."[frame][/frame]

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What's the date on the tyres you bought as "New"?

All the breast, Mike
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Sorry, only just spotted your reply. The curing date on the 4 tyres is 3814, i.e. about Sept/Oct 2014, so not too bad considering shipment from Japan and delivery to depot. I suppose the Japanese are applying 'Just In Time'!
John

John Naylor wrote:Sorry, only just spotted your reply. The curing date on the 4 tyres is 3814, i.e. about Sept/Oct 2014, so not too bad considering shipment from Japan and delivery to depot. I suppose the Japanese are applying 'Just In Time'!
John

Pretty good I'd say Peter

I have a tyre with the code DOT Y5 JV EX 1462. Can anyone tell me how old this is?

On the face of it - a 1962 tyre.......

It certainly feels wooden enough to be that old, but the first post says the four digit codes weren't used until 2000 so I'm a bit puzzled.

Codes were not standardised until the 80's, so manufacturers were using differing DOT codes prior to that. Your tyre is quite probably week 14 1962! Who is the manufacturer?
John

My tyre is a Warrior, made in China. It does have a European E1 standard marking but I can't remember when these started.

Crossply ?

No it's radial, 155 x 14

Not 1962 then!

Bit of a mystery then. It seems pretty hard so I think I'll chuck it to be on the safe side, pity as it has lots of tread; typical!

My ESSO tubeless regrade quality 'spare' tyre has 10/58 on the side.. the rubber is as good as the day it was remoulded and is 5 years older than the car!

T

I don't think Esso sold a range of tyres until some time later than that but it must be a fairly old tyre!Tyres often surviv quite well in a dark car boot.
"Regraded quality" tyres are not the same as remoulds. Regraded tyres are new tyres which sometimes have a cosmetic moulding fault or for some other reason are not being sold as "perfect". I used to buy them regularly for my cars but haven't heard of them being offered recently.