Rubber has a shelf life and it does not care about mileage. Every tyre carries a four digit code on the sidewall at the end of a longer string beginning DOT: the first two digits are the week, the second two the year. A tyre stamped 2318 was built in the twenty third week of 2018. Somewhere past seven or eight years, and much sooner on a car that sits still in the sun, the oils that keep the rubber flexible have gone and the surface starts to craze into fine cracks along the sidewall and between the tread blocks.
That matters here more than in most places, because a great many cars around Oxford do very little. They live outside a house in Summertown and cover a couple of thousand miles a year, so the tread stays deep while the rubber quietly hardens. When somebody asks for a look at a tyre that is cracking, the tread depth is usually the least interesting thing about it. The date code gets read, the depth of the crazing gets judged, and the answer is sometimes that it has another year or two in it.
Big alloys and low-profile tyres look good and break easily. We check both when we come out to Jericho or wherever the car is standing: the tyre for cuts, splits and bulges, and the alloy for damage, before anything goes back on. Level in Cowley, sloping in Headington: we set the car straight first. Underground parking in Jericho or Summertown is worth flagging.
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Low mileage is not the same thing as low wear, and around Summertown and Jericho there are plenty of cars proving it. What gets looked at is the date code and how far the crazing goes, rather than the tread alone. The assessment happens on the drive with the car where it stands, and if they have life left in them you will be told so.
A car in Jericho had over six millimetres of tread and tyres built in 2015. Fine cracks ran the length of both sidewalls. The tread was never the problem.
Crazing at the base of the tread grooves on a low mileage car in Iffley. That is where it shows first, because that is where the rubber flexes most.
A driver in Botley expected to be told to buy four. The surface marking was shallow and the rubber underneath was still soft, so they kept them and were told what to watch for.
On the sidewall, a four digit number in an oval at the end of the DOT code. Week first, then year. It is often moulded on one face only, so check both sides.
Not for ordinary cars, which is exactly why it gets missed. It is a judgement about the condition of the rubber rather than a number on a certificate.
Tread depth measures wear, not age. A tyre with plenty of tread and hardened, crazed rubber has lost grip in the wet without losing any depth at all.
It lets water into the rubber and eventually towards the cords, and it means the tyre has stopped flexing the way it was designed to. Grip in the cold and the wet goes first.
Often, and it is the answer we prefer to give. There is no reason to sell four tyres to somebody whose rubber is still soft.
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