How Old Rubber Puts Drivers at Risk: Do You Know the Age Limit?
Drivers check tyre pressure before setting off on a lengthy journey. To ensure adequate depth, they recall passing a 20p coin across the tread grooves. Everything seems okay. The rubber looks good. They are missing something very important, though. The tyres have a secret expiry date, and if you disregard it, a normal motorway trip might become a disaster. Many drivers in the UK think that a tyre with decent tread is good enough. That thought is quite incorrect. If anything, tyre age counts more than tread depth. An old tyre with 6 mm of tread can fail spectacularly due to the rubber deteriorating from the inside out. Find out how to figure out how old tyres are and exactly when they need to be changed, no matter what they look like. The Mechanisms of Rubber Ageing Tyres are sophisticated chemical compositions meant to be pliable and grippy. Anti-degradants are the secret constituents; these include antioxidants and antiozonants, among other compounds. These compounds progressively mov...