I have a Cub Cadet 128 that is a 1974 built tractor.Now,I haven't been the nicest to it as the previous owner I bought it from. It still has the Original Firestone turf tires on yet.I have a set of AG tires for it as well that are 5 years old..Weather checking to beat all..They are Nanco's and were made in China. All have been kept inside since I have owned them..
I bought a 4 speed shifter boot and in less than a year it was coming apart at the folds.... very dissapointing.
The wife's shoe soles just disintegrated the other day. They left black crumbs in their wake. We were on our way to dinner and she had no footwear.
Happened to my brother in law at a wake for a family member. We kept seeing black rubber chunks all over the floor at the funeral home. When he went up and knelt at the casket, everyone found out what the chunks were from..... We all still chuckle when we are reminded of it....Jim
Well I have been away from selling quality control lab equipment for a pretty long time now but the inside scoop on Volvo's horrible wiring harnesses was "due to environmental concerns they were not allowed to use certain chemical preservatives resulting in dried out and cracking wire insulation " maybe other suppliers are now "protecting" us too! Now I am getting all paranoid about my G60-15 Goodyears on my once in a lifetime purchase , stored inside but now worried!
I have a set of Firestone H70-15's in my basement. Tires have got to be 45 years old at least. Maybe 50 years old. They are like the day they were made.
I hear ya Jason! My Dads 1950 Chrysler New Yorker Newport has its original U.S. Royal spare tire (zero rot) and OLD Double Eagle white walls AGAIN not dry rotted.
Good luck if you ever decide to have those mounted on rims with those date codes on them. I had a hard time getting air for the spare in my '99 Sable a couple of years ago at Discount tire because of its age! Bell Tire wouldn't install valve stems on my '88 K-5 Blazer last year because of the date codes on the tires that still look brand new were "to old"!
Yep, national accounts are like that. So afraid of getting sued. No problem getting them mounted, I can mount them myself. That being said, Im not sure Id take them out on the highway and do 75 with them.
Ozone attacks rubber and causes the cracking. It is also a respiratory irritant. Are you sure it isn’t something to remove ozone from the air?
There are very few reproduction parts that are as good of quality as the originals. I think most of the stuff made in China is garbage. I think NOS rubber parts would be better if they have been properly stored.
Instead of rubber, why are they not using polyurethane. I just bought some new dust covers for ball joints & tie rods that are made from polyurethane and are very soft and flexible, much more so than rubber. They also have a lifetime warranty, so we'll see time will tell. Keith
Are you sure it isn’t something to remove ozone from the air? Wouldnt be the first time I was, ah, er, mmm-mistaken LOL... The shop owners that I frequented 15 years ago called them "generators"; The places always had a kinda weird "tinny" taste in the air. The always mentioned that it was to help preserve the rubber from wet suits and Regs hoses and parts etc. It would really suck to spend $500 on a wet suit and get to a vacation destination and pull it on and stick a foot through the knee! Or worse have a reg fork up and freeze closed (or free flow) at depth. ws
Back about 10 years ago, we were having motorcycle and ATV tire's sidewalls cracking and fork dust seals rotting out sitting in storage. After a bunch of warranty claims, they blamed ozone, which was being caused by running air compressors, pumps, etc. So we were told to store the bikes and ATVs separately from the air compressors. After replacing all the warranty parts, we got a refer box to cold store the units in when they were out of season. Don't know if it was actually the air compressor making ozone causing the rubber to crack or if it was a convenient excuse for the manufacturer, but we never had a problem again.
I tried to purchase Goodyear wiper blades that are supposedly made in the USA; even my local Goodyear dealer (a company-owned store) doesn't sell them.
My older son found an old rusty hand cart 30yrs ago in the woods. (who knows how long it was in the woods). Tires were still good on it then and still are now. Hold air and no dry rot. Bought a new handcart from Harbor Freight a couple years ago and tires are already toast.... Be interesting to know the chemistry behind this......
I am not reading all this or others I looked at http://www.cmtirerecyclingequipment.com/docs/FinalRubberTireRecyclingCarbonFootprint.pdf but I heard some key words like"closed loop recycling so products can be used over and over again rather than the higher CO2 footprint of using virgin resins for new products" I didn't read the whole thing because these generally are focused on their agenda of landfill degradation time frame and emissions during that period instead of what I want to hear. "Jason buys a new set of tires for his barbaric, emission oozing dinosaur of a car. Despite Jason's attempts to eliminate the tires personally through a high torque generated friction processes generating large clouds of yet to be analyzed smoke (our Prius test vehicles cannot duplicate such wanton disregard for Mother Earth!) thus we cannot definitively study this area of concern. That said we CAN reduce the usable life of these tires via the closed loop processes which ultimately taps out the production resins lifecycle ,causing the afore mentioned consumer to not have them in his possession as long generating said CO2 or testosterone fueled debauchery via "burn outs,getting sideways,drifting" and other archaic stunts of this limited but energetic subject test group.This early failure of the product will not affect the mass population as the tires will be replaced via daily use before they realize any issues. As an added benefit this will also degrade tires hidden away by previously successful methods AND to those who do none of the above concerns but merely sit in lawn chairs watching their cars. Our hypothesis is that given the expense and frustration of the accelerated decay of said tires and other rubber related products also created via closed loop manufacturing that they will eventually abandon these tremendous carbon footprint vehicles & join the population masses. ALL HAIL MOTHER EARTH!!!! You may now bow and sign here for your Prius.