The warning signs generally appear 2 years before tread separation occurs. I’ve had no reservations installing used tires on my car that someone discarded because of mild dry rot cracks.
With your amount of driving tires will never last 8 years. It is unlikely you will experience any dry rot with your tires.
Like li said, I’ve had sudden failures, maybe classified as a blowout, I dunno but never felt out of control. Hit a chunk of steel that ripped the front tire apart. No problem. I was going ten miles to visit my grandmother and borrowed my dad’s falcon. I asked about the rear snow tires that looked pretty bald. He said they’d be fine. Made it nine miles and it gave out. Just put the spare on. Same thing in the highway pulling the dock on my trailer. Sudden rear flat tire.
I could go on.
I’m just trying to envision the kind of tire failure that could cause me to loose control. Unless I were steering all over the place and braking like a little kid.
Geez I’ve had a lot of mishaps now that I think about it but never lost control or my head. Like a pilot you just ride it to the ground. One time I met a semi with a load of hay bales that came down off the trailer. Total black out. Truck ahead of me jackknifed. I jacked braked and steered straight and waited for the patrol. That was one of the worst, not knowing where the truck ahead of me was.
When a rear tire blows, the vehicle can immediately turn like a fork lift.
Tester
Like I said, I’ve had front, rear, even trailer tires blow and never lost control. I even lost a tie rod end at highway speeds and pulled to the side of the road.
Now two guys with orange vests on parking in the middle of the road afterwards kinda is telling. You have three good tires but I’ve seen cars spinning around with four good tires on dry pavement before. Ya just stay out of their way. Steer straight, light braking, and gradually pull to the side, just like the highway patrol instructs.
A steer tire in a semi seems to almost always cause them to depart the roadway.
I saw a pickup truck blow out a rear tire once on the expressway. A couple severe swerves back and forth followed by rolling over several times. The two occupants were in the roadway with cars swerving to avoid hitting them. It was quite the shocking scene to witness happen.
A few months after I got my driver’s license, I was piloting my father’s '63 Plymouth when we had a rear blowout in the center lane of the Garden State Parkway. My mother later admitted to be very nervous about how well I would be able to control the car, but because I didn’t lose control of the car, and was able to bring it to a safe stop on the shoulder, my parents learned to trust me behind the wheel.
Pulling the camper back from Florida one spring, we had bad weather in Iowa. The bouncing on the road loosened a spring enough to shred a tire on the camper. No fish tailing, just a big bang at 70 mph. Not saying people don’t lose control, just not my experience. Biggest problem was couldn’t get the Jack under it to change tires. Had to unhook and call for a tow. Only 100 miles from home so picked it up the next day. New springs, new tires, new hubs, when I got it home. Ya try to plan for contingencies but ya can’t carry a floor Jack with you. Never figured it’d be so low to the ground that the Jack wouldn’t fit.
Maybe I’ll be taught a lesson some day but getting pretty late in life for that.
Blowouts can obviously cause loss of control and accidents. Remember the Firestone 500? 250 deaths and who knows how many accidents were blamed on blowouts of that tire.
There was frost on the interstate one morning so I was going about 50 in the right lane. A guy in a bronco passed me. He started swerving, then loop de loop, slammed into the grass on shoulder sideways, bounced, and over he went. Good tires, just bad driving. Ruined his day. High center of gravity. Just physics.
You may recall my story about driving clear across Ohio during a very heavy snow storm in the early '80s. I drove–in second gear–in the one lane that was… sort of… passable as a result of the 18 wheelers. I did not see any snow plows during that long, slow drive, and there was no evidence that any plowing had been done.
I lost count of how many times I was passed by Jeeps driving in the unplowed snow in the left lane, at ridiculously high speeds. I also lost count of how many of them I passed–overturned on the median–as I motored past those wrecks at a safe speed.
Yup! The laws of physics will always win
A couple of things, tires typically lose about one PSI per month. My recommendation would be to inflate to the Placard pressure and add one PSI for every month until your next check. Add three PSI if you do mainly interstate driving or are going on a road trip. If road trip, reset when you get back.
AS for the cracks in the sidewalls, there are two types, checking and dry rot. Checking is not dangerous but dry rot is. The way to tell the difference is to rub a finger along the sidewall and look for a black powder residue. No residue, then it is checking, residue is dry rot.
The general accepted max age for tires is eight years for average climate conditions, 10 years according to the government, but many are looking at 6 years max. Costco has just changed their road hazard warranty on tires from lifetime to 5 years.
Last bit of advice, do what allows you to get a good nights sleep. That will be worth every penny.
I once bought a 1994 Ford Ranger, BRAND NEW, with Firestone Wilderness AT tires (yes, the very same tires that were associated with flip overs with another type Ford truck; Firestone at one point claimed the problem occurred precisely because Ford specified too low a pressure rating for the tire to be safe.) It too specified air pressures substantially below (by 15 psi? I forget) tire ratings. And it too needed to have the pressured topped off every few weeks. (I speculate that some owners didn’t realize they should keep the pressure up at frequent intervals, making it easier to flip. Also that some of the vehicles were driven aggresively off-road. I drove conservatively, sometimes on dirt roads and parking lots, and often on snow, but never off-road. I never flipped, and it was one of my favorite vehicles, until they stopped producing parts for it, and I was unable to replace a rusted part in the suspension.)
For a while I tried putting in a bit of excess pressure. It slowed the leak. But even the tire store told me that was a bad idea. They said it could do a lot of damage to the suspension.
As for using a different type tire for the spare: Remember this is an AWD, and that I am often hundreds of miles from the nearest open tire store. As I mentioned, using a donut spare may have played a part in burning out two limited slip differentials in my old 4WD Ford Ranger. That cost a lot more than getting the right wheel and the right tire - and much to my surprise, as the tire store pointed out, by removing a part, I can fit a full size wheel and inflated tire in the spare compartment. It may have to be a bit underpressure - but I carry two pumps. And it may lift the cargo surface in the back a bit, reducing cargo capacity. And perhaps the extra weight very slightly reduces gas mileage. But for me it is worth it.
BTW, I have had several tires blow out on cars and trucks over the years. Maybe I was lucky, but I didn’t lose control; in fact the only obvious sign was noise, and maybe a slight pull to one side. But of course that might depend a lot on the weight distribution. If most of the weight is on the front or rear tires, and one of those goes bad, I assume I could lose a lot of control. And yet, one of those blow outs was, if I remember right, on a rear tire of a rear engine rear wheel drive VW Bus. Nothing super-bad happened.
OTOH, I blew out a front tire on a moped, while braking, at fairly low speed. It immediately rotated around horizontally by 180 degrees, and I went down. On a busy road. That was very scary. I suspect the same thing could happen on a motorcycle, but I’ve never driven one.
I’ve had at least one sudden flat tire on a bicycle. I don’t remember whether it was front or rear. Nothing super-bad happened. But I suppose it could. Not a lot of redundancy in a 2 wheel vehicle.
BTW, on the Venza, I will just go by what the tire store I trust says. If they say I should replace them all, I will. If they say make the leaky tire my spare, and pump it up if needed, I will. If they find a nail, and can fix it, fine. Or whatever. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have asked here. I suppose tire lifetime depends on various factors, and you don’t have enough data to properly evaluate this particular case. D.C. metro does get hotter than some places. The tire store presumably knows what to look for.
Yes, that was the famed tire that started the TPMS mandate, Ford sent specs to Firestone for said tire, FS built the tires per Fords specs, then customers complained about the stiff ride due to the stiff truck suspension for the Explorer, so instead of telling customers to deal with it, it’s a truck chasses or changing the springs and shock to a more suitable ride for the soccer mom to be happy, they decided to tell the customer to lower the air pressures to 26psi, well that made the ride better, BUT, another flaw on FORD’s part was the routing of the exhaust pipe that ran to close to the right rear tire..
So take a vehicle and load it down with weight, plus put heat from the exhaust pipe next to the R/R tire, plus lower the pressure from 35psi down to 26 psi, plus add heat from the road and now you have the perfect storm for a blow out… Also the Explorer being on the Ranger chassis, high a higher center of gravity being a SUV making it already prone to roll overs…
The way I look at it, if it had blown out on any location of the vehicle instead of just the R/R (right next to the exhaust), then I would blame FS a little more…
Anyway, it was a very SAD time for the people’s lives that were cut short and their family’s over it…
The FS tire was on a few different vehicles including some full size Chevy trucks (IIRC) and only the Explorer (and it’s sister) had the roll over issue, so did FS have some flaws in the tire, yes, did Ford have better lawyers at time, yes…
BTW, all tire manufactures have recalls from time to time, they are just caught faster before it gets out of hand, I have been involved with tire recalls other than Bridgestone/Firestone over the years…
Yes. They are called tread separations. That was part of what happened in the Firestone/Ford Explorer thing some 20 years ago. You don’t want to be part of that.
They are called flunkies for a reason. It is truly amazing how badly informed people who work at tire shops are.
And one last word about those Firestone tires. They had a design flaw. I go into excruciating detail here. (Edit: The website appears to be down, so I can’t paste the URL - But if you google “Barry’s Tire Tech: The Ford / Firestone Controversy” you will get there) (Further edit: Here’s an archived version: Barry’s Tire Tech: The Firestone/Ford Controversy
Bottomline: The inflation pressure Ford specified didn’t help things, but there was a design flaw in the tires and age paid a role as the tires didn’t fail right away.
Hundreds of miles from a tire store ? Where are you driving , the Sahara desert ?
Do ya feel lucky, punk?
And engineers with decades of experience and who understand the math and physics say 10psi over is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.
If dangerous, why does sidewall read MAX PRESSURE 51 PSI ?
All I, the flunkee, havever noticed is 1mm extra center tread wear at end of life. (Expected more.)