robertj298 

I have the original tires on my 1985 Univega Gran Turismo. The bike was only ridden a half a dozen times and then hung in the garage. I’ve been told to change the tires but after removing one after a flat caused by a track the tires look fine to me no cracks on the outside or inside and they still feel supple to me. I have new ones in order but hate to waste perfectly good tires.

steelbikeguy

I don't think there is any way to predict what will happen.
Sometimes tires age very gracefully. I still have the original Vittoria tubulars for my 1974 Raleigh International. They hold air and look pretty good. I don't trust them enough to actually use them, though....



at the other end of the spectrum is a Michelin that I used briefly and then took off for perhaps 5 years. It stayed on the wheel during that time. I decided I should use that set of wheels again, and after perhaps 15 miles, the rear tire developed a huge lump in it. I got about 4 miles further (1 mile from home) when the tube managed to work its way between the layers and blow! The layers of cords had somehow delaminated from each other. Weird.




The tires were never built with the intent of lasting 10 or 20 years, so it's a bit misguided to expect an old tire to still perform to spec. I think the Michelin should have done better, but the Vittoria is doing far better than anyone should expect.

Steve in Peoria

10 Wheels

Tubes can last 25 years. Tires about 10 years.

bikemig 

Threads like this pop up from time to time and I have yet to see a good explanation. No doubt it varies based on what the heck is used to manufacture tires and how they are stored. I know I've had good luck with tires stored in my basement but there is no light there and no extremes of heat and cold. I have a set of IRC 700 x 30c tires that look good and ride good that are older than heck. I wouldn't take them on a multi day trip but I used them on a 50 mile ride recently.

Trakhak

Steel beads in unused or seldom-used tires can still rust over time and hasten the deterioration of the fabric containing the bead. Tire blowouts out on the road are not fun.

robertj298 

Looks like it's unanimous I have new Paselas on the way so I'll just pitch these.

Kabuki12

You will like the Pasela Tires. I have them on a few bikes and a good tire for a good price. The thing with old tires is that they lose their flex and grip, in other words they get hard like old brake pads. I have had a blowout on an old tire that appeared to be ok. I was trying out some adjustments I made on a bike and everything was fine. The bike was feeling great and I was cruising fairly fast on a down hill and it just blew! It must have delaminated or something. It scared the crap out of me but I was able to slow down without losing control. Since then if they feel hardened or show signs of age they go in the bin. It ain’t worth the risk.

robertj298 

I've read these tires are quit rare because they are a true radial tire made by
National Tire Co Ltd Japan and were not made very long.

canklecat

I wouldn't take a chance with old tires. Even if they look okay. Too much can go wrong if a tire fails. You can buy decent new tires for around $20. Continental Ultra Sport II or III are excellent values, although they're notoriously tight fitting and it's handy to keep a bead jack around, like the one sold by Kool Stop, just to mount those tires.

Ozone and other environmental conditions (including UV) are a big factor in the longevity of rubber and plastics.

I've seen indoor ozone generators destroy rubber and plastics. Sometimes the generators were deliberately installed, those "ionic air cleaner" things people used to plug in around the house, thinking it would only "clean the air." Those ionic air cleaners destroyed items in my grandparents' home -- outlet plates, switch plates, coffee makers, even insulation around wiring, anything made of plastic near the ionic air cleaners. And it sprayed sticky dusty residue around every outlet where those things were plugged in.

Other times it's an old, defective appliance. About 10 years ago a neighbor, who smoked like a chimney, was complaining about her TV. I offered to take a look. When I tried to turn the set around to check the back, the back of the TV crumbled like potato chips. The insides were coated in a black, sticky goo, which was also sprayed on the wall behind the TV. I realized it was from her incessant smoking -- she probably smoked two packs a day and, as far as anyone could tell, didn't eat or drink much. She appeared to subsist almost entirely on tobacco.

I told her the old set was a safety hazard, and offered to give her one of my old but good Sony Trinitron portables if she'd let me discard her old TV. She agreed. I was concerned about a fire hazard that would affect others nearby.

Same thing can happen with many old electronics, including older laser printers.

So besides normal environmental hazards, there's generalized pollution that plagues almost every city, and localized pollution in our own homes, all of which can degrade rubber and plastics.

dddd

Just like Kabuki12 says, old clincher tires delaminate where the plies overlap under the tread, first causing "outer ply failure", followed by the single inner ply then allowing the tube to escape it's confines (blowout).
The polymers in clinchers, as opposed to the cotton or silk threads in old tubulars, can tend to separate into their solid and liquid constituents. So the plasticizers (oils) may accumulate on the surfaces of the fibers, causing the adhesive compounds to also degrade and lose their grip where the outer plies overlap.
Tubulars generally do not overlap their plies and rely on adhesives like clinchers do. Instead, the two plies both get folded at their edges where the stitching holds the tire into a tubular section, with no reliance on shear adhesion of overlapping plies.

And as for the tread, it hardens with age, to the point where it wears very rapidly as the surface crumbles away where it meets asphalt.

If those are perhaps National/Panaracer-made radial tires, know that there is no worse-performing tire ever made for a bicycle. Handling/steering will dramatically improve with their replacement.

randyjawa 

I have used a lot of old tires and most with no ill effects. However...

And old and somewhat worn set of tubulars failed catastrophically. While riding my firs Peugeot PX10, the rear tire blew a thumb size hole causing me to skid slightly. Lucky it was not the front tire...


The second failure was near total. The tires were NOS items that had hung in a bike shop's basement storage room for a long time. I bought the pair for twenty dollars, thinking "what a great find and bargain". Both tires failed completely, ending up is a semi-shredded state and, more or less, falling apart. This situation was most pronounced on the gum wall areas of the tires and the wire beads. Also, the tire liners, the plastic style, were a total mess and actually causing flats...




So, old tires do go bad, but not necessarily always. That said, I choose not to use them anymore, just in case they fail me at speed or cornering. And ask yourself this - can you feel a peace of mind while trusting an old tire that just might let go at the worst possible time? I don't anymore and why should I. The tires on my most recent build/restoration set me back less than $40.00 CND for the set and they are a treat to float down the road on...

Chuck M 

I bought this bike back in February and the tires looked "ok" but I knew they had to be pretty aged as I what I could find on them, they were probably 35 years old. I did not have time to work on the bike when I got it so I didn't order tires. When I did have time to get started on it the tires I had looked into were all gone. But from time to time I would take it down a bike path to get coffee just because I enjoy the bike. It didn't take long for them to start showing their age. If you like the idea that they are original and opt to keep them, take it easy and stay close to home.

My Paselas will be here today, I hope I like them as much as people say I will.

speedy25

Ozone is the enemy of rubber, especially natural rubber. There are anti ozonant products available for using in rubber mixes, but many companies use little of it or none at all. These products have a purple hue so they cant be used in the white or tan rubber mixes. so both of those rubbers will NOT have any ozone protection.

canklecat made correct observations but just didnt know the chemistry.

-SP

JohnDThompson 

They weren't made for very long because they didn't work out very well. They had a weird, squishy/squirmy ride quality. There's no real point to radial tires on a bicycle, anyway. They're used on car tires because cars can't lean in corners, which means the contact patch of a bias-ply tire lifts partly off the road in hard cornering, resulting in loss of traction. The more flexible sidewall of a radial tire keeps more of the contact patch on the road, resulting in better handling. But bikes can lean in corners, so the contact patch stays the same size; it just shifts off the centerline of the tire when you're cornering.

I suspect some marketing person decided that having a radial bike tire sounded like it would be an improvement over a bias-ply tire without thinking too deeply about it.

sd5782 

I’m in the same situation with an 85 Torpado Nuevo Sprint that I just bought. Not a well kept bike but low miles on the stock Michelin 700-20s on it. In this situation on my very short ride, I was at least able to say that the bike rode very nicely and may be a keeper. The OP on the other hand has old tires that degraded his riding experience. One never knows, and it is hard to resist when that first trial ride is calling you. His ride will surely improve.

GhostRider62

In a hot garage next to a window? Maybe 3-5 years.

In the wine cellar wrapped up to keep oxygen away? A couple decades?

VegasTriker

While you are at it replace the brake pads. They get hard so don't stop nearly as well as new pads. It's cheap insurance. If I refurbish an old bike, no matter how good condition it is in, if it has the OEM tires I replace them along with the brake pads. I've seen it too many times where the tires looked good but soon became unusable once the bike was ridden.

VtwinVince

It's pretty subjective, and keep in mind that heat cycling of the rubber is important, as it is with motorcycle tires. If tires sit for a long time with no heat cycling, they may look great but be going pretty hard and gripless.