Tyre lifetimes

As a general rule of thumb, yep. Tyres die of old age as well as wear. I wouldn't lose sleep over 120 months on the nose, although I've certainly lobbed plenty of tyres because of age. My personal record is the tyres on my trailer - 29yo...

But to have a _blowout_ on a 10yo tyre? External influences are still the most likely cause.

Is there any sign of cracking on the sidewalls or in the tread on the tyre (an age/brand pair to the ex-tyre, I presume?) t'other side? Was there any sign of what caused the failure? Nearside, by any chance?

I presume you know where the date code is and how it works?

were the tyres of a suitable size and load rating?

An observation is many seem to fit the cheapest possible tyres to a trailer because of the low speeds - but of course they may well be loaded up to their maximum often - unlike car ones. Then it may be parked up for ages with the sun beating down on them - and then suddenly required to give of their best. All very different from cars - which tend to have more generous sizes and regular use anyway.

Trailer tyres tend to have much higher ratings than car ones for the same sizes - and be more expensive...

The f***ed ancient tyres on my car trailer were 145 10 Mini ones - rated to about 300kg each. I chucked proper trailer rated ones on - 500kg each. They're offbrand Chinese, but they're the only brand to do 'em unfortunately.

& it's a lot more obvious when you're driving a car with an underinflated tyre than an underinflated trailer tyre.

And often 'odd' sizes which makes them even more expensive?

I suppose small wheels help with a load load height?

Four wheel or two?

How much of an 'event' was it? Did all hell break loose or did it just do the thump-tiddy-thump-tiddy-thump thing until you pulled over?

If the former, then swap the remainder, if the latter, just make sure the spare's pumped up. Although, for a two wheel job, this does presume you've got a jack suitable for the trailer to hand. For a four wheel all you need is a sufficiently sized lump of wood to pull the good tyre onto and thereby lift the dud one off the ground.

However, I am inclined to the visual inspection approach for old tyres. Cracks running around the sidewall seem to be a good indicator of a tyre that's going to lose integrity if it's old.

Yes. And appropriately inflated.

What he said. The new tyre on my trailer is a "Nankang". :o(

(I have a rule to only normally buy tyre brands I've heard of.)

I check them every time I use it for this very reason - it only gets used every few weeks.

then it may just have been one of those things, you pick up a puncture while on the move, the tyre heats up and goes bang. It would actually be a useful thing to have a remote tyre pressure monitoring system on a trailer, because the first you know of a tyre going down, if you are lucky, is that you see smoke from it, or someone else warns you.

as to your original question: IIRC 6 years is the oldest recommended.

Ordered 4 new ones today.

Under favourable conditions, rubber *can* last much longer than that. Direct sunlight is probably the thing to avoid, also try to keep them reasonably well inflated. If you let them go completely flat under load, they are likely to crack from oxidation where they are severely deformed. This will show up as deep cracks.

But ou can quite easily collect a puncture when moving. Mine are 6 year old car tyres so I was starting to wonder when I should wonder about them.

They're top end budget, up with Falken, Kumho, etc. Friend just put a set on his 530i; grippy but a bit noisy sums them up, although neither criterion is desperately important for a trailer.

ChengShin on mine...

that reminds me, must fit the winter tyres again soon, the ling-long was spinning all over the place last week, ok again now it is warmer.

SWMO's Lupo had one of it's original Conti EcoContact tyres left at 10 years old, together with the cheap & nasty Nankangs fitted by the dealer we bought it from, and one firestone that was a distress purchase following a puncture. The Conti was still legal, but very grey looking and had gone noisy, so I replaced all 4 with mid-range tyres.

I'm sure I've read recommendations to replace tyres at 5 years. Not sure I'd go that far, but I'd definitely say 10 years is too old.

Personally, it's not a problem, as my mileage wears them out before that time.

Early last year a guy at KwikFit indicated I was mad to be removing part worn (4-5mm) M+S tyres. They had 3 digit date marks, I think they were

15-17 years old.

Once down to under 5mm no further use as M+S don't work any better than a blocky summer tyre when worn and all were H/T rated on rims off a

140mph car.

I should have slashed them as I suspect they may have sold them on.