Vehicle Tyres - 10 year limit ban

[slammage]

Good I’m glad this has come in force . The amount of cars I see with 20 year old cracking tyres but the owner claims “gOoD tReaD THo m9” does my swede in . I don’t see how people in general (not aimed at anyone here mainly joe bloggs out running his rock hard 15 year old Toyo T1r’s hand me downs) don’t realise the tyres are the only thing connecting you to the road ?!

And the amount of cars I see in the hard shoulder with blow outs and you can see sometimes the condition of the trad pre blowout ... mind boggling .


Will be interesting to see what becomes of this all

[Ritchie]

This is a good thing really, I remember a few years ago I put some unused but very cheap Pirellis on the back of an E39 M5.
Turns out they were years old and rock hard.
They were scary and entertaining in equal measure, think traction light flashing when accelerating at 100+ Mph, they just refused to wear down no matter how much sideways abuse they got.

[outrage]

Jul 23, 2020 18:04:33 GMT Dez said:

I believe Germany and Belgium have tyre date laws. As I understand it it’s where a lot of UK partworns come from as it’s not legal to sell them in Germany once they’ve been demounted or something.

There is no such law in Germany. You can run old tyres and also buy and sell and mount part-worns - no problem. Cracked tyres are a TÜV (MOT) fail, of course.

[generallee]

^^^I think most of the German part worms we get are winter tyres that are too worn for winter but still legal. Or summer tyres that are still legal but not worth storing over winter, which is why so many part worns over here are winter tread pattern.

As for the lorry/coach thing I'm all for it. It only effects single wheels as I understand it, on duals you are free to use any old dross still. Not that it helps in Frankenhely's case.

[cjj]

Jul 23, 2020 18:04:33 GMT Dez said:

Jul 23, 2020 17:42:41 GMT rapidyellow said:

what tyre laws existing in other countries similar to this?

dead right that commercial vehicles should have age dated tyres, completely agree given the weight [and people] they carry.


we will just have to wait and see what comes

I believe Germany and Belgium have tyre date laws. As I understand it it’s where a lot of UK partworns come from as it’s not legal to sell them in Germany once they’ve been demounted or something.

I can understand Germany, as they have unrestricted roads so it's 1+1 on that.  If you drive a car that pretty much never exceeds 30mph for various reasons, such as city cars, the risk is of course going to be exceptionally lower.

I've known people to get rather virtuous about part worns - going off all sermon and verse if the suggestion is made - but the same people have no problem with buying second hand wheels that have tyres fitted.  To me it's one and the same thing - you can't really separate the two things, for the most part (for example, the used wheels could have part worns on and you wouldn't know the difference).

If I had to choose between the cheapest new tyre available and a p/w premium tyre (age caveat of course) then I of course would go with the latter.  My cars do spend an awful amount of time stood still though, so I have bought tyres before just so the wheels can be used for it to sit there.

[BiAS]

I had an '85 Mk2 Honda Accord in the mid 90's that came with the original factory fitted tyres on the rear wheels, they still had nearly full tread on them so I swapped them onto the front. They had hardened so much in the 10ish years that not only was the handling, braking and all round feel massively worse but when I did what should have been a massive handbrake on smoky burnout in a concrete car park they produced zero smoke and left a rooster tail of rubber crumbs behind the car.
These days I like to stick fresh rubber on anything I buy so I have a matching set of tread pattern and compounds. I've bought Nankang NSII for almost everything for years now as in 19/50/15 they feel as predictable if not better in some cases than 'premium brands' on my selection of light and not particularly fast road cars.

[drseg]

bought a corsair 2000e long aago in the 80s a bit customised with kelly superchargers on the rear wolfy slot mags 15mph opposite lock power slides in the wet was really dangerous but fun, 185 70 13 part worn good years made it much safer

[TessierAshpool]

So this is to apply to front tyres only for some vehicles, does anyone know the reasoning behind this?

www.gov.uk/government/consultations/banning-tyres-aged-10-years-and-older

The ban will apply to tyres fitted to the front axle of:
- heavy goods vehicles
- buses
- coaches
plus to the tyres on all axles of minibuses when fitted in single configuration.

I don't understand all the terminology, but presumably there are some combinations of vehicle listed there that are not dual rears?

Also does it create a weird incentive for operators to run 10+yr tyres on all their rear axles as there will be more part worns to go around?

[ballbagbagins]

Maybe because the front tyres do most of the braking.

[generallee]

I suppose the thinking is that if you have a single tyre and it blows (especially on a steer axle of a wagon) it's much more dangerous than on a dual. Although in my experience if a dual tyre lets go the driver doesn't always notice until the other overheats and pops too.

[carat 3.6]

Now if this was properly thought through I'd be behind it 100% but it isnt. As far as I'm concerned ANY tire that is used on the road should be replaced at 10 years no matter if it's a motorbike or an artic.

As I read through that I can see a few glaring omissions. No mention of the worst offenders of all, horseboxes for a start. On road plant has no mention at all, the mention of minibuses is a can of worms all to itself, then you have private/vintage/historic vehicles which will be open to abuse.

Either all tires should be covered or none at all.

[madmog]

I'm not against it being applied to cars.

Slightly off topic if you have oddball tyre sizes, it might be possible to change the wheel to something more standard so that future tyre purchases aren't so expensive.

Those BMW metric wheels spring to mind.

On my Merc W114 (the one that had a blow out on the motorway in France on the way to RRG Le-Mans) the standard tyres are 175:80 14s. After the blow-out I couldn't get a replacement spare at the tyre places I spotted along the way. So the rest of the trip I had a background worry of not having a spare in a foreign land. Changing to a 15" wheel gave me a wide variety of tyres of the same overall diameter but crucially, probably in stock everywhere and cheaper than the originals.

[rallyboy]

OK - let's say you apply it to cars - the Michelin tyres on my toy are now 10 years (no signs of cracking, etc, grip well in both dry & wet) but need to replace them as they're too old (it's not a performance toy btw). Toy does 500 miles a year if I'm lucky so I'll buy some budget tyres as replacements.... I got a set of "budget" tyres with a set of wheels I bought a while back (some chinese brand I'd never heard of) - virtually new, full tread depth, etc - so thought I'd use them up - they're ok in the dry but don't even look at the throttle pedal if it's even mildly damp as you'll be first at the scene of the accident.
Is that really going to improve road safely ? A bit more joined up thinking is required.

[Badwolf]

Is the cracking of the more elderly tyres due to atmospheric or UV damage or a mixture or something else. The reason for my question is that many classics spend little time on the actual road and most of their life in a garage (I know, don't go there!!!). So if the problem is UV breakdown tyres should last much longer than 10 years.

[dodgerover]

If you have a vehicle with an odd sized tyre you might well find that the new ones you can buy are close to 10 years old anyway.
Cracking where the cords are showing has always been an MOT fail

[carat 3.6]

Jul 24, 2020 21:16:21 GMT rallyboy said:

OK - let's say you apply it to cars - the Michelin tyres on my toy are now 10 years (no signs of cracking, etc, grip well in both dry & wet) but need to replace them as they're too old (it's not a performance toy btw). Toy does 500 miles a year if I'm lucky so I'll buy some budget tyres as replacements.... I got a set of "budget" tyres with a set of wheels I bought a while back (some chinese brand I'd never heard of) - virtually new, full tread depth, etc - so thought I'd use them up - they're ok in the dry but don't even look at the throttle pedal if it's even mildly damp as you'll be first at the scene of the accident.
Is that really going to improve road safely ? A bit more joined up thinking is required.

That would be your choice to fit budget tires or name brand though wouldn't it?

Let's say your 4 tires are £200 per corner, that's £800 over 10 years means that you spend £80 per year on tires. Not that expensive when you break it down.

In my opinion the budget tire situation is what actually needs laws against it, as many of these Chinese no names are not fit for purpose.

[carat 3.6]

Jul 24, 2020 16:41:46 GMT TessierAshpool said:

Also does it create a weird incentive for operators to run 10+yr tyres on all their rear axles as there will be more part worns to go around?

That is what happens at the moment with tippers, skip lorry's, and grab loaders. The reason is that due to the nature of where these vehicles go the rear tires have a very short life before they are classed as illegal, so alot of old curse word tires get fitted to use them up. On these vehicles you will normally find good tires on the front axles however.

Also bear in mind that "steer axle" tires are different than "drive axle" tires, so you don't put old fronts on the back.

[rallyboy]

Jul 24, 2020 21:49:22 GMT carat 3.6 said:

In my opinion the budget tire situation is what actually needs laws against it, as many of these Chinese no names are not fit for purpose.

Yes, that's the point.

[homersimpson]

One of the issues with buses might be that some tyres are regrooveable so depending on how much use the vehicle gets they could last a long time even in commercial use. I'm not sure if lorry tyres are the same.

It would be interesting to see whether this law ends up applying to commercial vehicles in private hands not used for commercial purposes.

As an aside I saw a lorry outside my house about 6 months back that had a flat front tyre, he clearly hadn't gone far on it and the tyre fitter came out and actually put a new tyre on it in the road using crowbars which was impressive. The amount of rubber debris from inside the old tyre was quite shocking, there was a big pile on the road for a few days and it highlights that the tyre had clearly suffered badly inside but on the outside still looked good.

[pseudonymous]

I don't get how anyone manages 10+ years on a set of tyres on anything used remotely frequently. Also, what about cars exempt from an MOT, there isn't any way of monitoring tyre age there, unless they are involved in an accident and get inspected then.