Pedaldude
Well-known member
Either way, you’ve gotten the most out of those tires. Aside from the uneven shoulder tread wear, it looks like you’re pretty close to the wear bars in the center of the tire. That will really impact performance in the rain, especially standing water.
I can’t tell for sure by just looking but it also looks like those tires have gotten hard too and that’s what I would worry most about.
Other than damage, during regular use, there’s really three things that will make you need new tires:
Regular wear, just the normal shedding of rubber from cornering, braking, accelerating and rolling down the road. If I have irregular shoulder wear on tires that I like and whether the alignment is correct or not; I sometimes will dismount and remount them inside out before it gets too noticeable in addition to normal tire rotation.
Heat cycles, especially if you enjoy spirited driving. Taking turns hard, braking hard and seeing the traction control light come on during acceleration as well as going really fast on the highway is going to get that rubber pretty hot. Every time you heat the tires up to a certain temperature and then park it, that’s a heat cycle and it causes deterioration of the rubber’s chemical properties beyond normal wear. The resulting change is usually reduced traction over time.
Plain old age, just sitting in the driveway tires will go bad. Especially if you live somewhere where it’s pretty hot but just sitting outside and getting UV damage, or even in a garage; the off gassing of chemicals over the years will show up on your sidewalls in what people call ‘dry-rot’ where the rubber starts cracking, sometimes even delaminating from the tire carcass. Though when I lived in the Northeast, I had problems with some tires getting moldy and even turning to weird goo or powder. Either way, that’s also why when getting new tires, you want to check the code on the sidewall to see how old they are.
Tires and trucks are so expensive now that it’s a cheap investment to purchase a tire durometer that checks the hardness of your tires, though once you become familiar with it; you can also just use the corner of your thumbnail. Then a decent tread gauge as well as a laser thermometer can all help with keeping your tires happy and your truck performing its best.
In the dry, tires that still have good grip will usually have better performance than brand new ones because there’s more contact and less tread block deformation. Some water won’t even hurt, just puddles and heavy rain. The problem is that when tires have gotten harder over time, the performance loss is gradual and it can mean a car length or more in stopping distance from even moderate speeds and hitting a deer/moose or other vehicle will cost a lot more in repairs or even insurance costs than just getting new tires.
These days, I like to go with Michelin and have had the best longevity out of them both in use and also disuse because I don’t drive a lot of miles. But Continental and Yokohama are good brands too. Though where I live, there’s tons of debris and I had a lot of problems with punctures in my Yokohama Geolandar tires that I had gone through two sets of. They were comfortable though and had good traction.
Good luck with your new tires and enjoy your truck!
I can’t tell for sure by just looking but it also looks like those tires have gotten hard too and that’s what I would worry most about.
Other than damage, during regular use, there’s really three things that will make you need new tires:
Regular wear, just the normal shedding of rubber from cornering, braking, accelerating and rolling down the road. If I have irregular shoulder wear on tires that I like and whether the alignment is correct or not; I sometimes will dismount and remount them inside out before it gets too noticeable in addition to normal tire rotation.
Heat cycles, especially if you enjoy spirited driving. Taking turns hard, braking hard and seeing the traction control light come on during acceleration as well as going really fast on the highway is going to get that rubber pretty hot. Every time you heat the tires up to a certain temperature and then park it, that’s a heat cycle and it causes deterioration of the rubber’s chemical properties beyond normal wear. The resulting change is usually reduced traction over time.
Plain old age, just sitting in the driveway tires will go bad. Especially if you live somewhere where it’s pretty hot but just sitting outside and getting UV damage, or even in a garage; the off gassing of chemicals over the years will show up on your sidewalls in what people call ‘dry-rot’ where the rubber starts cracking, sometimes even delaminating from the tire carcass. Though when I lived in the Northeast, I had problems with some tires getting moldy and even turning to weird goo or powder. Either way, that’s also why when getting new tires, you want to check the code on the sidewall to see how old they are.
Tires and trucks are so expensive now that it’s a cheap investment to purchase a tire durometer that checks the hardness of your tires, though once you become familiar with it; you can also just use the corner of your thumbnail. Then a decent tread gauge as well as a laser thermometer can all help with keeping your tires happy and your truck performing its best.
In the dry, tires that still have good grip will usually have better performance than brand new ones because there’s more contact and less tread block deformation. Some water won’t even hurt, just puddles and heavy rain. The problem is that when tires have gotten harder over time, the performance loss is gradual and it can mean a car length or more in stopping distance from even moderate speeds and hitting a deer/moose or other vehicle will cost a lot more in repairs or even insurance costs than just getting new tires.
These days, I like to go with Michelin and have had the best longevity out of them both in use and also disuse because I don’t drive a lot of miles. But Continental and Yokohama are good brands too. Though where I live, there’s tons of debris and I had a lot of problems with punctures in my Yokohama Geolandar tires that I had gone through two sets of. They were comfortable though and had good traction.
Good luck with your new tires and enjoy your truck!
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