Tire age question

[Soon2Bretrd]

Hello all, considering purchase of a 2011 allegro RED 38QBA for a trip around the country this summer. Are Michelins with 5/6 of 2016 a worry for an 8000 mile trip. These are on a 37k rig and unknown how many miles on the tires. North Trail says no cupping or irregular wear.

Any advice from the crowd?

[Bucky573]

Originally Posted by Soon2Bretrd

Hello all, considering purchase of a 2011 allegro RED 38QBA for a trip around the country this summer. Are Michelins with 5/6 of 2016 a worry for an 8000 mile trip. These are on a 37k rig and unknown how many miles on the tires. North Trail says no cupping or irregular wear.



Any advice from the crowd?

You need to look at the sidewall of tires for cracking/ checking. If you’re not comfortable, take them to a reputable tire dealer and have them look at them.
I replace a set of Michelin on my 43’ this past fall. They were date stamped 2009 and had 30k miles on them. Tread was fine, very tiny sign of sidewall checking. I just wasn’t comfortable with driving on them any farther. I will add that I replaced my steer tires in 2015, so the 2009 tires where not on my steer axle.

[foundwaldo]

RV tires tend to dry rot before the tread wears. I would look at the year on them and that can gauge it better than tread. There is a 4 digit code on the side of the tire that represents the week and year that it was made.

[Soon2Bretrd]

Dot stamps are 0516, so approaching 4 yrs old

[dmholt]

You should be good to go with that date unless there are cracks in the sidewalls. Usually, people recommend replacing tires at 6 or 7 years old.

[foundwaldo]

Originally Posted by Soon2Bretrd

Dot stamps are 0516, so approaching 4 yrs old

Yep Feb of 2016. Just keep an eye on the sidewall. Mine are 2015 and I am thinking about it but lot of money.

[wildtoad]

You’ve got 5 or 6 years of good travels before needing to swap them. But do check them regularly, keep them clean, properly inflated.

[Mr_D]

Michelin recommends having the tires professionally checked starting at 5 years and absolutely replacing at 10 years. No tire manufacturer says to replace at 6 or 7 years. I went 9 years on my 8 expensive Michelins.

[daledrob]

Tire age and Michelin’s,
I used to have Michelin’s on my motorhome and when they got to the six your life I started checking and Mitchlin suggest changing them out by the 8 to 10 year timeframe.
If you check on a Michelin website there was photographs of how much checking or cracking on the side of the tire was acceptable.
Mine showed a little bit of cracking and I had ran them to eight years or so of Age.
I will ent to Arizona and it was 117° when we came back we were cooking inside the motorhome but the tires felt just fine.
I pulled into a tire shop just to doublecheck, they looked them over and said no problem they wouldn’t take them off they said keep running them.
I used to drive truck and operate heavy cranes along with a Trucks ever since I was 16 years old.
We used to run Michelin‘s on all the trucks and trailers I’ve seen Michelin‘s quite a bit on cranes and the cracking was not a problem as long as you keep the proper amount of the air in the tire.
Check Michelin’s website and that’s where you will get the fax. And by the way when it was 117° outside I was running 65 and 70 miles an hour.
I looked at the Mitchlen site and found on page 8 covers the weather cracking on the tires and page 28 covers actual five pictures with six pictures showing how much whether cracking is acceptable but there’s a lot of good information on this website and it covers motorhome tires.
This is the link to it : https://www.michelinb2b.com/wps/b2bc...s_Brochure.pdf

Good luck and like I said there’s a lot of good information. They must use a top-quality rubber on their tires to go to 10 years.

[Reacher]

Mr D (post 8 ) is correct. I got 10 years out of a set of Michelins following their advice.

[Soon2Bretrd]

Thanks for the advice everyone! Very helpful

[Bahamaniac]

3 years ago everyone was saying replace tires at 10 years. Nowadays, most are saying replace at 6 years! What changed?

[Cincy Steve]

Originally Posted by Bahamaniac

3 years ago everyone was saying replace tires at 10 years. Nowadays, most are saying replace at 6 years! What changed?

For me, it was a friend’s steering blowout, on 7+ year old tires. $15k repair, w/o any collision damage.

[F4Gary]

Originally Posted by Cincy Steve

For me, it was a friend’s steering blowout, on 7+ year old tires. $15k repair, w/o any collision damage.

Anecdotal. Need a bigger sampling than just your friend. Sorry for his misfortune.