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Saturday, July 12, 2008

How old are your tires, really?

A friend of mine from a messageboard and fellow mommy blogger, Karla, shared this and I thought it was very important and decided to pass it on. Click this link for the story. This is a news video about how old tires are re-treaded and sold as new tires. The danger in this is that tire integrity breaks down over time and the new tread can come off and cause fatal accidents. I just went and checked the tires on our van and car (yes, I'm preggo and scooted myself under both to check lol, I'm sure it looked funny) and luckily mine actually were new when we bought them with dates of 2006 and 2007, so I feel better. I will definitely be checking the dates on any "new" tires we have to buy in the future.

To check the date on your tires, find the row of number starting with DOT. You may have to look on the inside of the tire because until very recently this number was imprinted on the inside. The last 3-4 digits following the DOT is the clue to the date. The first 2 numbers are the week it was made and the last 1-2 numbers is the year. For example on my van the number was 1507, meaning made in the 15th week of 2007. A 3 digit number means it would have been made in the 1990's. Like 517 would mean the 51st week of 1997. In the following pic you can see the date would be the 27th week of 2004.
Please make sure you and your family are driving on safe tires. End of PSA :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I had no idea of this. THANKS for the info, now I'm off to check on mine!