How do you tell the age of a tire?

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=11

 

If I am reading the stamps correctly, your tires are well over 10 years old. Personally, I would not trust them for driving any further than the local tire shop. Rubber deteriorates with age, and the general rule of thumb I have always heard is that 10 years is the absolute maximum age to allow. Anything over that and they need to go in the recycle bin, no matter what the tread looks like.

It is not correct that performance tires are less prone to blowout. If anything, I would think it is the other way around, but I do not know for certain one way or the other.

As for pressure, I run my 328 with 36 psi rear and 33 psi front.

 

I believe one is the 16th week of 1997, and the other is the 27th week of 1993. Yes. Tires that old are a problem.

 

I have been very happy with Bridgestone Potenza RE050. All the performance I need since I don't regularly track the car, but enough that I don't have to worry about it when I do decide to drive 'enthusiatically'.

I could step up a notch in the price range and go for the Potenza Pole Positions, but the difference in performance really wouldn't make a difference for the way I drive.

If you are not looking at driving flat out for extended periods, you most likely don't need to top of the line tire, but you would probably want a Z rated tire just in case you get the chance to open it up and have some fun now and again...

 

Jay,
First off, I am so glad you joined the Mondial club! As you are new to the whole Ferrari thing, there are some things I think you should get checked immediately, just to make sure you are not driving around in a ticking time bomb. You are already on top of the tires, which is good, but there are a couple of other things that are really condition critical.

1) Have the hoses, ESPECIALLY the Fuel lines, checked asap. The problem with a midengine car is that, if a fuel line leaks, by the time you notice the smoke, it is probably too late to save the car, and could pose a risk to yourself and others. The web is full of Ferraris that have burned themselves to the ground and it is almost always related to fuel lines. This is a really serious problem and vigilance in this area is essential.

2) If you don't know when the last belt/bearing change was, assume it was never done and limit your driving until you get them changed. When belts break on these cars, it can be catastrophic.

There are other things that need to be done or should be inspected. But the ones I mentioned above are the difference between driving home, walking home, and becoming a very large sparkler on the side of the road Feel free to call me whenever if you have any questions or if I can be of any assistance whatsoever. Just from our brief conversation, it is clear that the Ferrari brotherhood has a great new member!

 

At another f-chatters recommendation, I put Kumhos on and love them. Great tires and VERY inexpensively priced. Lets face it, tire technology has far exceeded what was available in 1987, so anything short of a donut will be a marked improvement over what is on your car!

 

A lot of 328s owners (myself included) are running on Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3s. Great tires and not very pricey since they are only 16" alloys (if stock). Bridgestone also makes some great tires, particularly their new Potenza RE-11. Those 2 brands and models of tires would be my top choices.

Best regards,
Dino

 

Sounds like a deal! I have heard good things about Kumhos, but never tried them myself.

You'll enjoy the drive more knowing you're on solid footing.

 

10 years is way too old. Personally I would not run tires over 5 or 6 years old.
Some of the most important $$$ one can spend is for tires.

 

I am running the F1 GS-D3 Goodyears on my 328 for about a year and am pleased with them.

 

33F 35R should make you and yours happy campers

 

I learned the hard way on old tires. Blowout at 70mph, front tire, on my Alfa. Had it ben an suv it woulda flipped. Tires "looked" great. But were 10 yrs + old. Of course, no injuries, but beat up the front fender/streched the metal bad. Never again old tires.

 

I was saved from that mistake, long ago, by a mechanic at a local inspection shop in MA. My Alfa had been in storage for years. When I took it for inspection, the mechanic came outside, took one look at the tires, and told me to not waste my money on an inspection -- the tires would fail.

They were about 15 years old, and while they looked okay in the garage, a close look in daylight revealed all manner of hairline cracks in the tire surface, especially the sidewalls.

The inspection stations (or at least some of them) are finally getting serious about checking safety items, not just the exhaust check. I was going to swap out those tires anyway, but I wanted to get the car inspected before putting it into the shop.

(Never have an Alfa inspected by the shop that would do the repairs -- they seem to find all sorts of little "extras". I had one shop fail it for a "blower switch" -- which confused me, because it didn't have a supercharger. Turns out they'd failed it for the defroster not working .... on an Alfa Spider. I hadn't had the top up on that car in five years, and they're worried about a defroster? )

Yes and no.

Tires that old are dangerous -- performance tires, especially so, as the compounds on maximum performance tires seem particularly senstive to age.

But max performance compounds are also such that they cease to be "performance" tires long before they reach the "dangerous" stage.
My S03's went noticeably "off" after six years. They weren't falling apart, but they weren't gripping as well, either.

So if you replace performance tires when they go off, they're less likely to get old enough to be "dangerous".

Of course, road hazards are such that you can have a tire failure on any age tire.
My Celica got tossed off the road when I had a blow-out on tires less than two months old. Of course, it wasn't the tires: a rock got scooped up by the brake cooling duct, jammed between the rim and lower arm, and the AWD twisted the rim in half.

Those were my short list, too, when I replaced the S03s.

I went with the RE-11s, which are impressive autocross tires.
But, compared to the S03s, the turn-in response feels just a hair "mushy".
Given that they're designed for auto-X, I gather they were intended for lower profile tires than the 55-series fronts used on the 328.
They're still candidates to replace the 45-series A046s on my EVO.

And they have the advantage that they don't go off from cooling down while sitting at stop lights -- which is the problem I had with the VRs that preceded the S03s. (I was leery of the Eagle F1s because of my experience with the VRs not maintaining temperature in traffic.)

Of course, the "mushiness" is a minor effect, and only in comparison to the S03s, so it might not be an issue for other owners. And they're fine once you're into the turns, they just don't feel quite as responsive to steering inputs.

There isn't an "ideal" pressure for a tire. You really need to adjust for your contact patch.

I've been running 32 psi F/R on my RE11s which seem to give a flat contact patch, and good handling balance.

(I really should get a pyrometer to check the tread temperatures -- the "mushiness" might be that I need to tweak the pressures.)

 

Quote after a quick search:

'To determine a tire's age look on its sidewall (usually the back side) for the letters DOT followed by one or more ovals containing numbers. The last oval will have three or four digits. If there are three digits, the first two are the week of the year and the last digit is the year of manufacture (the digits 229, for example, would indicate the tire was manufactured in the 22nd week of 1999). To distinguish between the 80 and 90 decades, tires manufactured in the 90's will have a triangular mark to the right of the manufacture date. Beginning with the year 2000 there are four digits. The first two are the week of the year and the last two are the year of manufacture (2301 indicates the tire was manufactured in the 23rd week of 2001).'