I have been trying to help a friend of mine buy used tires for his 06 F150. We have looked at a couple of sets that were off of 05+ trucks that have been stored for 1+ years. They were BFGoodrich Rugged Trail T/A's factory tires. The tread looks brand new but there are cracks along were the tread meets the sidewall, they go completely around the circumference of the tire. Is this normal or due to dryrot from being in storage for so long? Any ideas?

 

No matter what do not buy tires with cracks on them around the sidewall that is just asking for a blowout

 

I believe that's dry rot?

 

I kind of thought the same thing. The guy told me he had taken the tires to a local tire store and they told him they would be ok for atleast another 40,000 miles, I told him he better find another tire store because it looked like dry rot to me, but what do I know.

Anyone else seen this on stored tires?

 

New tires aren't that expensive if you know where to look.

 

dont mount em ........

 

Its completely normal here in AZ. I have run 2 sets of rugged trails on my ford and both eventually got small cracks on the edge of the tread. Small cracks are ok IMO.

 

I have a set of BFG AT's with same thing, tires are great and closing in on 50k miles.

 

So are the cracks just something normal with BFG's

 

If you want to know how old the tires are there is a four digit code stamped on at least one side of the sidewall. If the code is three digit then the tires were made before the year 2000. The first two digits are the week of the year it was made. The second two digits are the year. For example if it had 2504 on it the tire was originally produced the twenty fifth week of 2004. All tires have this stamp someplace on the sidewall. The code may have other numbers or letters before it but those are just manufacturer codes and what matters is those last four.

 

I think its normal with any tire.