SLron

MB Owners manual recommends tires be replaced at 6 years regardless of tread wear. Does any one have experience driving tires older than 6 years? Did you gave any tire failure issues?

ItalianJoe1

Rubber ages with time and environmental exposure. Most tire manufactures will not even SELL you a tire that is 7 years old. At firestone and tire shops like that, inventory over 5 years old is destroyed and thrown away, too risky to sell.

Tires dry out and become much more susceptible to tread separation and total failure from smaller damage/impacts. Worked in retail tire shops for 5 years, saw plenty of it (here in south FL, lots of snowbirds that park cars all summer so low miles/year). Old tires just aren't worth it, and do not perform like new tires in emergency braking or maneuvering situations.

Ghostty

when i bought my SL had to drive it home 500 miles, since bought it in San Diego. Very next day got a flat tire on my way to the store. Apparently the car was still running on ORIGINAL(!) tires.... 11 yo car on original tires... The previous owners were not that thoughtful about that...

So my 2 cents - in 5-6 years a set of tires doesn't seem that expensive to change.

Regards

carguyshu

if you don't go through tires in 5-6 years you either aren't driving your AMG enough or you aren't driving it hard enough

bbirdwell

Tire failure on two different manufacturers. In both cases tires were approximately 5 1/2 years past the 4-digit manufacture date molded into the rubber. I now replace tires at 4 years of age no matter what the mileage.

Heatwave

A sidebar comment: Don't forget the air valve stems ... they get old, get bent and otherwise roughly handled during washes, tire rotations, inflations, etc. I've never had a set of tires that lasted more than 4 years, but I once had new tires installed and the tire shop failed to replace the old valve stems. One of the new tires went flat within a coupla months time ... turned out to be a leaking valve stem. I went to the tire shop immediately for new stems, which were installed free gratis. Lesson learned.

anothercar

I bought my 2003 SL in 2015. It had 17,500 miles and the OEM PS 2's on it. So, the car had 12 year old tires on it. They were hard as a rock! I test drove it in a light rain and almost lost the rear end in a modest curve. First thing I did is replace the tires with Michelin Pilot Sport A/S 2's. Great tire as I've had them on other cars in the past.