Are these tires safe?

[bjf]

This is an older pair of Michelin Pro4 tires. They have small cracks all the way around on the shoulders -- not the central surface, and not the sidewalls. Michelin says the shoulders are made of a softer compound for better cornering. I don't care about that -- I never go very fast anyway -- and I don't care about the cracks unless they are a precursor of something bad, like the tire blowing out. What do folks think?

[johnniecakes]

I would ride them, some surface cracking doesn't mean the casing is affected.

[azrider]

In the words of Memphis Raines...................


https://media.giphy.com/media/Qw4X3FnmFFCPANtlhtK/giphy.gif

[Seramount]

don't see a problem.

[Black Dog]

Thats what tires do when they age. Not a big deal.

[Louis]

Absolutely safe. Mine do that all the time.

You may or may not want to trust me on this - I keep riding tires until they're worn to the point where I can see non-trivial sized spots where the threads show through.

[ibis]

Absolutely safe. Mine do that all the time.

You may or may not want to trust me on this - I keep riding tires until they're worn to the point where I can see non-trivial sized spots where the threads show through.

Same here. I still occasionally cx race on a set of classic Michelin Mud green tires...which have good tread but the sidewalls have seen better days.

[martl]

the rubbery coating on the outer side of the tire does little (if anything) to the structural strength of the tire, this comes from the woven threads underneath.

[soulspinner]

Ride em like ya stole em:bike:

[Mark McM]

In my experience, drying/cracking of the tread doesn't affect the integrity of the casing, so the chances of a flat don't increase much. But it does affect grip, particularly wet weather grip. These tires don't appear to have degraded too much yet, but you might consider changing them if they degrade further if you do hard cornering on wet roads.

[weisan]

Pals, you are scaring bjf pal, stop it!

bjf pal, as an extra precaution, you need to ship the tires to me for further testing...

:D

[Dino Suegiù]

I was expecting to see some geologic-level cracks, and those are barely visible, completely OK.

For really bad looking sidewall/shoulder cracking (but still perfectly ride-able), grab a NOS pair of Hutchinson Fusions....:eek: