Tyre Treatment?

Life Cars & Motorcycles
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Source

[quote]Tire Age Consideration
Although tires have a tread wear rating that can be measured in miles, another important factor to take into account the calendar age of the tire. Tire makers and the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are currently studying the effects on tires from exposure to the sun, type and regularity of use, and how well they are maintained. The British Rubber Manufacturers Association (BRMA) recommends that tires that have not been put into use should not be used more than six years from when they were made. All tires should not be used for more than 10 years. In 2005, The Japan Automobile Tire Manufacturers Association (JATMA) recommended that tires be inspected after five years. If tires are 10 years old or older, they should be replaced. Many European car manufacturers and some U.S. car companies say that tires should never be used for more than six years.

Read more: The Life of Car Tires | eHow.com ehow.com/about_5513429_life- … z1rLTrtq9U[/quote]

It is always my experience that tyres will show faults within six years in Taiwan.

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[quote=“Ducked”][quote=“sulavaca”]Nitrogen per se does not improve any of those things much within normal use over normal air. They have simply mentioned those things in order to serve as an advertisement.

Read more here: lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/ … -3606.html
[/quote][/quote]

While I’m pretty sure that “The moisture content of nitrogen leads to a cooler running tyre” (along with most of the rest of that article), is bollocks, it reminds me that, when I worked on an agricultural research station, the tractors sometimes used to use water ballast in the tyres.

You’d think that’d rust the rims internally, but maybe tractor tyres are tubed? (I suppose it’d rust them less if the tyres were full of N)

I can’t remember, if I ever knew, how you got the water out again, perhaps you had to split the wheel and mop it out, but I imagine there would often be a residue left on the tyres.

Of course, this being Scotland, they had to put antifreeze in the water.

When I later worked in marine archaeology, (poly) ethylene glycol was in use to stabilise and protect wooden artefacts.

Of course that’s a very different situation, but it’s still an unstable organic substrate being protected from atmospheric oxygen.

Tractor tyres are probably specially designed for this, but I wonder if the principle could be applied to car tyres.

EDIT: I suppose with high speed running, water couldn’t be used because the vapour pressure might blow the tyre off. Dunno about straight ethylene glycol, but it might attack the rubber.

Less (but still a bit) speculatively, it seens possible the internal tyre sealant goops, and maybe inner tubes too, might have a preservative effect.

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[quote=“sulavaca”]
The best piece of advice I can offer is to keep the vehicle garaged. This will not only reduce weathering to the vehicle’s tyres, but will reduce all issues overall.[/quote]

I’ll look into improvising a cover. One of the local farmers was using some big sheets of silverised plastic for some chicken-covering concept, which would have been big enough to cover the whole vehicle, but I dunno where I’d score one of those, short of chicken-stealing.

I suppose bin-bags over the wheels to start, though its unfortunate they’re black and biodegradable. You see bits of cardboard propped in wheel arches here but I’d never taken them seriously before.

I suppose this might mean I have to reexamine my long-standing contempt for wheel trims, too. This is all very disturbing.

Of course they don’t cover much of the tyre, (perhaps I can “invent” bigger ones) but I think they overlapp the tyre-wheel interface where much of the cracking occurs.

DAMN! I think I threw mine away.

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That’s to protect against dogs urinating on the wheels. I’m fairly sure that its a practice which serves no other useful purpose.

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That’s to protect against dogs urinating on the wheels. I’m fairly sure that its a practice which serves no other useful purpose.[/quote]

Well, if heat amd sunlight are as bad as everyone seems to think, shade should be a good, no?

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Yes, it would. Heat is the main catalyst in degradation however.

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I’m going to voice in with sandman - no matter how much polish you put on those things, they’re dry, cracked, and waiting to split open. You should probably go ahead and take a photo of the tread so the user-body politic can see how much wear you’ve actually got, but my vote is change them.

Now, I’ve never worked in auto repair, but come from a family of tried and true 30+ year veterans. They generally change out tires before they even get close to looking that dry and they do it after the treads become too shallow (far before technically-but-not-visually-bald).

If you’re going to try to protect your tires on the car you rarely drive, things you might also want to consider:

I dont know if you mentioned where you keep the car, but - covering them. While you’re at it, just cover the whole car. It’ll keep your paint job in good shape and avoid looking like the junker someone forgot. PLUS, dog urine (ohh yes) is just so easy to spray all over those nice tires. No one discussed the chemical properties of urea on this post. So, good first step is to get them covered.

Second one is to take that bay out for a spin at least once a week. Unfortunately, its not just your tires that are going bad if you dont drive a car regularly. All of the seals on all of the parts in every part of the car will start to slowly dry out. The engine coolant, oil, hell even the gas can start to sour if you’re not doing any miles.

Another lesser discussed problem with only moving your car once in a blue moon is your tires basically become square. High pressure or not…if you dont roll them, they get physically flat. Did you consider your cracks might be from the tires flattening out due to lack of use?

Just a further anecdote about tires in Taiwan. I drive a motorcycle everyday and my tires dont crack, even though they were on there for over 3 years (and yes, they were threadbare). The guy below me owns a motorcycle that has sat outside for two years and is driven twice a month (ish) and his tires, not cracked. It sits in the rain just like mine. He goes out once a week to run the engine, spin the tires so they dont get flat, but it actually moves out of its space at most twice a month.

Its POSSIBLE that the tires you’re getting are also not designed for Taiwan. Its possible those tires are designed for use in a climate that isn’t Taiwan. Everyone buys snow tires in winter in Canada and the Northern USA, but no one should use them in Florida…

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Just to generally also agree with sulavaca whose post I saw after I posted just now – covering wont permanently save your tires, or any other water sensitive part of your car.

However, given the excess grit and the volume of water raining on a car outside you can reduce the damage and prolong the product life by reducing its exposure.
But if you want your car working great…best way is to drive.

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schatbot : I agree with, and appreciate, most of your observations above. However, re:

[quote=“schatbot”]
Its POSSIBLE that the tires you’re getting are also not designed for Taiwan. Its possible those tires are designed for use in a climate that isn’t Taiwan. Everyone buys snow tires in winter in Canada and the Northern USA, but no one should use them in Florida…[/quote]

The tyres are Taiwan made Bridgestones so probably aren’t winter tyres.

Re: [quote=“schatbot”]I’m going to voice in with sandman - no matter how much polish you put on those things, they’re dry, cracked, and waiting to split open. You should probably go ahead and take a photo of the tread so the user-body politic can see how much wear you’ve actually got, but my vote is change them.[/quote]

I think your (and Sandman’s) assessment of the awfulness of the tyre condition may be a little over-stated, but I’d accept that at least two of them are probably marginal at best.

How much cracking do you consider acceptable?

Given that these tyres are at the end of their life, the two better ones are suitable targets for “experimental” treatments that could, just possibly, (though I think not very probably) cause rapid deterioration.

If that happens I’ll know not to try it on new tyres.

Re[quote=“schatbot”]
“It’ll keep your paint job in good shape and avoid looking like the junker someone forgot.” [/quote]

Its a bit late for that. This is by far the worst-looking car I’ve had, but paint condition (or presence) has no relation to safety or function, and I rather like the junker-look anyway.

Re [quote=“schatbot”]
PLUS, dog urine (ohh yes) is just so easy to spray all over those nice tires. No one discussed the chemical properties of urea on this post.[/quote]

You say that like its a BAD thing?

digitaljournal.com/article/250634

“Self-healing rubber: Just add vegetable oil and urea”

Maybe I should wait for this final solution to come to market, or is that just pissing in the wind?

Incidentally, and more seriously, I stumbled across a recommendation for castor oil as a tyre dressing. (not a recipe, as the title might suggest)

ehow.com/how_5720894_make-tire-dressing.html

Of course there’s lots of bollocks on the internet, and one doesn’t know the scale or timebase of the testing, but it makes me a bit more confident that sunflower oil, though less stable than castor oil, isn’t going to be too disastrous.

I might try castor oil in the future, if I have a future.

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er…see below

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[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Ducked -
If & when you decide on new tires, you might look into the tire package offered by CostCo here on the island.
It looks to be a pretty comprehensive plan with good after buy service included.

Also, they do offer that ‘nitrogen’ inflation. Although, IMO, the jury is still out on actually how much of an advantage that is for non-commercial users. Still, if it has a good side and its part of the package - good for them.[/quote]

http://tirenitrogen.typepad.com/techinfo/Ford%2520Baldwin%2520TireAging%2520%25232.pdf

Paper on tyre failure mechanism. (Its specific to tread separation, but the conclusions may be generalisable)

I think this research arose out of US litigation and recalls over apparently tyre-related Ford Explorerrollovers, with associated mass-recalls of Firestone tyres.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_controversy

N filling is mentioned towards the end. They find a 70% reduction in rubber deterioration compared to air.

As they point out, you can’t get the oxygen below 5% without repeated purging, which I suppose Costco might not be willing to shell out for.

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This is quite scary, and I suppose you guys could take it as vindication.

I’ll admit it doesn’t behave as I’d expect a rear blowout to behave. I’d expect the car to swerve in the opposite direction, (though that might be due to driver input) and I wouldn’t expect a blowout to have enough energy to lift the back of the vehicle, as this seems to.

I’ll admit that my attitude to tyre perfection may be partly conditioned by a rear blowout I experienced very many years ago in a Commer van (not the most stable of vehicles) while travelling fairly fast (as Commer vans went) on the A1 in Scotland.

We heard a bang but none of us, including the driver,(I was a hitcher) realised that the tyre had gone until maybe 10 miles down the road, when someone asked where all the black smoke was coming from. It was burning quite fiercely when we stopped and was difficult to put out.

The van was pretty heavily loaded with gear and hitchers, and not long before the driver had stopped to pick up a couple of rather pneumatic Swedish girls (yeh I know, only in the movies) who apparently were too much for his…er…rubber.

I always imagined that a front blowout would be much worse, and have tried to put the best tyres on the front wheels of my various “bangers” but recent reading suggests that apparently that too is wrong and misguided, or at least controversial

A rear blowout is apparently considered by some to be more dangerous and, in the case of a significant difference, you should maximise tread/grip on the rear wheels to stop the tail sliding out into a spin (that last bit makes sense, not so sure about the first bit).

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Nitrogen.

.[/quote]

That’d be better, and is cheap to produce industrially in bulk (by fractional distillation of air) but there probably wouldn’t be payback for setting up a system in petrol stations, even if you could prove it worked.

I don’t know of any cheap supply of pure N readily available to individuals.

Methane or propane might be all right, though the slight fire/explosion hazard would be a deterrent. One would have to purge all the air from the tyre, which would be difficult.[/quote]

I’ll admit I thought this was a slightly off-the-wall suggestion, though not very dangerous provided you purged the air, so you had only fuel gas and avoided an explosive mixture.

I reckoned without the mind-boggling stupidity/venality of the makers of tyre sealant aerosols, who apparently use(d) BUTANE as a propellant, and then told/tell the punter to get the tyre inflated with AIR!

Didn’t that get flagged at the first development meeting? Had they been sniffing their own product?

http://www.ehow.com/how_7666572_fix-flat-tire-butane.html

http://www.tiredefects.com/fix-a-flat/aerosol-tire-inflators.cfm

NOTE: This is separate and distinct from the “hillbilly” practice of seating the bead on the rim with a deliberate ether/propane etc. explosion, which, while a bit scary, is a known risk tackled under fairly controlled conditions, rather than an accident indefinately waiting to happen.

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Minor update on this. Havn’t been driving much, but have given the front tyres a light “top-up” coating with SFO perhaps every couple of months or so since the original 6 coats.

I’d moved the worst tyres to the rear. A few months ago I started treating them with Canola oil, which is a bit more stable than SFO. They’ve had perhaps 3 coats.

The cracks have…er…gone.

(well almost)

OK obviously they can’t have gone. They must just have been hidden/closed up, either because there’s been some swelling of the surrounding rubber, and/or because the cracks have filled up with a sticky mixture of veg oil and degraded rubber/carbon black.

Maybe if I’d been driving more they’d have stayed open.

I didn’t really expect cosmetic improvement and have to regard it as a bad thing, since it could hide a problem.

OTOH, if the cracks are filled/closed up, it seems reasonable to suppose they are to some extent protected from further ozone attack.

Might post some pictures later, when/if I score some more online picspace.

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Leaky valve on front drivers side prompted me to dig out the spare. Oo-er.

IMG_3428
IMG_34284000×3000 2.64 MB

Its bulged laterally across the tread area too.

IMG_3429
IMG_34294000×3000 3.37 MB

This is the second one to fail in this way.

These are rather old tyres (about 15 years) but I think the aborted SFO treatment may be a factor. I stopped doing this after seeing a very noticable softening effect on a crunchy old radiator hose, which later blew. Tyre softening could be a good thing up to a point, but there is no obvious way to limit it to that point,

Time for another three overpriced used tyres.

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I tire has a useful life of 5 years.

The damage shown is actually a result of hardening rubber.

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Ses you.

I dunno, but I notice the number keeps going down.

EDIT: Actually of course I DO know, since I have data.

Considered as a toxin, the LD50 of time on these 4 tyres, under these conditions, is 15 years.

2 failed recently, 2 are still in use.

(The original spare was a different make and was younger, but was destroyed driving over some barbed wire hidden in grass, so can be excluded from consideration)

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Discussed above

"More recently, the Japan Automobile Tire Manufacturers Association (JATMA) recommended practice, issued May 2005, states, “Customers are encouraged to have their vehicle tires promptly inspected after five years of use to determine if the tires can continue to be used (recommends spare tires be inspected as well). Furthermore, even when the tires look usable, it is recommended that all tires (including spare tires) that were made more than ten years ago be replaced with new tires.”

Of course I’m breaking that rule too.