View Single Post
Old 06-08-20, 12:44 AM
  #33  
Ross520
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2019
Posts: 316
Mentioned: 0 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 174 Post(s)
Liked 177 Times in 99 Posts
Originally Posted by daoswald
Let's look at a different item entirely: Trailer tires.

Have you ever been driving down the Interstate and seen a trailer sitting on the shoulder of the road with one blown out tire? Why are trailers more susceptible to this phenomenon than automobile tires? If you go strictly by the numbers, there are a lot more cars on the road than trailers; you should see cars off to the side with blowouts far more often than trailers. What's the difference?

The difference is that cars tend to wear down their tires long before the rubber has time to age out. Popup campers get used a few times a year at best. The tires are going to age out before their tread is gone. What happens when the tires age out? The sidewalls begin to crack and get brittle. Then one day the owner is heading down the highway at 65 or 70, and pow; they're in a really dangerous situation with a blowout on a thing that only has two tires in the first place.

Ok, now for helmets: Unless you crash, or ride through rain and mud every day, your helmet will look mostly new for years to come. It's like the trailer tire with lots of tread left. But the foam, plastic, and glue are all deteriorating, possibly at different rates, and due to different environmental factors. So over time, that helmet will not behave as it did the day it was purchased. And that could put the rider at greater risk should the worst happen. One document I read asserts that the foam itself deteriorates very, very slowly, but that the resins and glues can be susceptible to environmental factors that even include oils from the rider's body.

This article is excellent: https://off.road.cc/content/feature/...le-helmet-1280

I'm guilty too. I don't love paying $100+ for a new helmet when the old one seems to be working just fine. I don't even like the process of trying to find a new one that I like. Helmets become a bit like gloves, where years of use make us comfortable with the fit. But the truth is it's the right thing to do, to replace based on age. My last helmet I kept for ten years, which was way too long. My current helmet is only a few months old. Let's see if I can force myself to replace it at the 5-year mark.
Those are re-treads you're seeing, and they're exactly what their name implies. Rather than replace the whole tire, many trucking companies will have a tire "repaired" with a new strip of tread. This is far more cost effective than replacing the whole tire. It's a controversial practice, being that they can fail, rocket off the tire, and cause an accident.
​​​​​​
Ross520 is offline