How to tell an outdated tire.
20/20 had a TV show on Old Tires and there is video on their website. Worth looking at. Auto deaths caused by tires 6 years old and older. Old motorcycles tires, obviously, can be even more dangerous. They explain how to tell the age of tires on the show also. Example in the number codes: 414 was made in the 41 week of 1994.

 

I have never had a motorcycle tire last over a year on the rear...Maybe 2 years at the most for the front...But I can see where this could be a concern as there are a lot of low mileage Harley s out there.

 

cracks around the bead and on the sidewalls are the main thing to look for on older bike tires. If you have either, you need a new tire

 

The danger can be even if you are buying a "new tire" it could be several years old.

 

Amazing how times have changed.Years ago we used to get a lot of our tires at auto junk yards,some so weather cracked people today would freak.Then drive our vehicles like we stole them.One of my muscle cars the tires are at least 35 yrs old,other than air pressure,and looking them over I never give them a second thought.To each his/her own.

 

experience a major front blowout on 2 wheels and then get back to us

 

bought a fxstsb that was stored 8 yrs tread was perfect but hard as a rock and greyed out a bit very slippery trust me beware

 

I know a guy who rides his tires bald, even had a rear flat with his GF on the back. I keep telling him how stupid he is and how dangerous it is. Once my tires get to the wear bars, I'm ordering new tires.

 

Gonna throw something else out there I'm seeing. My OEM front tire was a K591 from which I got about 11k from. On my second to match a new SE180 I went with a GT502F tire which ran great but I only got 7k out of it. So I decided to go back to the K591 and trying to get a deal bought one off of Ebay. Didn't even think about the age of the tire till I saw this thread and the tire turns out to be 7 years old. Great! Still decided to run it but after getting 11k out of my first K591, I'll be lucky to get 5k out of this one. Is it true that an older tire will wear faster than a newer one?