<VV> Tire Shelf Life

[roboman91324 at aol.com]

Grant,

It is theoretically 6 years so those tires will reach their limit in a couple of years.  I am not informed enough to know if the "Z" rating might reduce this time limit.  Since they are high performance tires, they may be more strict in their application.  Of course, the rating is probably conservative just like "use by" dates on canned food.  If you intend to use them on a high performance car soon, I would go with it.  If you are going to store them for a few years, maybe not.  The half price cost of a "Z" rated tire might be as expensive as a normally priced standard use tire.  If you aren't going to exceed 150 MPH, buying the "Z" tires at half price might be a false economy.  Besides, high performance tires generally use softer rubber and you won't get the mileage you may get with "normal" tires.
I had a slow leak in a rear tire of my 1970 C20 pickup and took it to the local American Tire location.  These were 16.5 Inch tires with 8 lug rims.  A couple of the technicians came over just to have a look-see.  As a blast from the past, my spare tire has a split-rim if you know what that is.  The tires on the rear were different and larger than those on the front.  All of them have about 90-95% tread left on them.  They fixed the slow leak which turned out to be from the clamped-in valve stem.  They spent more then an hour on it once it was in the shop.  I was pleased that they did it for free including the valve stem and wouldn't even take a tip.  I asked them to "air up" the front tires and they checked the date code.  Since it had lapsed, they wouldn't even put air in them.  I asked if I could do it myself and the guy said he would look in the other direction while I did so.  They wouldn't have touched the split-rim wheel with a ten foot pole even with a proper date code.  I suspect that part of the reason for their refusal is that this company policy regarding date codes might lead to selling more tires.  I am still running the "old" tires on the front of my pickup.
By the way, the reason the valve stem was leaking is because the rubber grommets clamped between the flange and the nut/washer deteriorate with age much the same as the rubber of the tires.  The clamp type stems have a grommet against the inside flange.  Then you insert it through the hole in the rim, place the second grommet over the stem, place the washer and run a nut down to compress both grommets.  Split-rim wheels must always have tubes.
Doc~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In a message dated 1/20/2020 11:49:36 AM Pacific Standard Time, virtualvairs-request at corvair.org writes:

Message: 1Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2020 12:04:02 -0500 (GMT-05:00)From: Grant Young <gyoungwolf at earthlink.net>To: "virtualvairs at corvair.org" <virtualvairs at corvair.org>Subject: <VV> Tire shelf life?Message-ID:    <454447874.4921.1579539842344 at wamui-agami.atl.sa.earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Wondering if there is any data out there on how long a new in storage tire is good? I have a chance to buy some Z-Rated Goodyears for half price from a big tire seller, but they have a production date of 2015. Thanks,Grant