I need some help regarding tire shelf life. My father is under the impression that brand new tires cannot sit a shelf(storage) for a period of time because they dry rot and wear out. I seem to remember reading something about this, but Im not sure. Can anyone give me any insight?

 

Yup.

The rubber gets harder & kinda slippery with age. With sunlight & ozone & even just high temperatures it might start cracking, too. Storage conditions can be so different that I don't wanna guess at a time limit for storage.

 

Warranties also start at the date of manufacture, not the date of purchase because of this.

 

The one thing that I do know about tire storage is that you never store it on it's tread. This supposedly develops a flat spot on the tire that might render the tire useless.

 

i'm taking a stab at it but i think i heard 7 years. . depending on the storage conditions of course - if its out of the sun/heat/extreme cold etc i think you should get a lot of life out of it. .. it might not be quite 7. . (i work at sears and i think it came up in training once .. can't quite remember correctly)

 

I could vouch for the cracking though. I had a set of falkens (the older ziex 502 tires) and they were just stored in the garage. I haven't used the wheels and tires for a little less than a year, and if you look at the tread, you could see cracks throughout the entire tire. Don't know if this affected the life and performance of the tire because I sold them and got something else.

 

some tire cleaners. . mostly some of the stuff that makes tires black and shiny .. take out the moisturizers in the tire and that'll speed up the cracking process too. . (it actually takes out the uv protection and then the sun dries them up fast)

 

put them in trash bags and put a mixture of windex w/o ammonia and water. then seal the bags up tight and keep them in a cool place. this should make them last for alot longer than just sitting on your garage floor.

 

I've heard this too:thumbup: