New Tires - Manufactured Date - What is Fair and Reasonable

[Ulvetanna_imp]

Thanks for the thoughtful replies. In my case, I will likely only put 1500 km per year on this bike. Sad I know. So they will be replaced due to age and likely not wear.

Again my inquiry to the forum was to ensure that I was not being unreasonable in my expectations of a new tire.

Here is the reply that I received from my retailer earlier today that I feel provides some useful insight from the retailers perspective:

"You're not being picky at all, this is completely understandable. 3 years is definitely a little older than what we'd like to sell, though we unfortunately don't get the chance to inspect any tire's manufacturing date before it ships, as we order them fresh from our distributor. The vast majority are between 6 months and 2 years old, though there is the odd outlier. In any case, we're happy to exchange them at no cost if you ever receive tires that are over 3 years old."

So it would appear that from this retailers perspective they think it's fair to expect a tire to be less than two years old when purchased as new.

Hope this helps others in their expections when buying new tires. In the future, I will use 24 months as my expectation for my road tires.

With those use parameters, yep, go with skins within 24 months old, because tyres age much more quickly once they're mounted and exposed to the elements. If a tyre stays on any bike of mine for a year, that would be unusual. I don't think that's ever happened. So for me, no problem.

I recently had to replace a set of tires on an SUV I rarely drive, which is parked outside. After four years, the sidewalls were cracked quite noticeably. But the tyres only had 7,000 miles on them. Auto tires are sold much faster than m/c tires so the DOT age stamp is far less a concern, though.