Buyer beware when it comes to tires

I recently bought a set of tires from a large tire and service chain. One pair had a manufacturing date of 4314 stamped on the sidewall. The other pair is stamped 5013. When I queried the service person, he said there is absolutely no difference so long as the tires were stored correctly, and their shop has to take what their warehouse sends them.

Now I am not a rocket scientist, but it seems like the ones stamped 5013 are much older, so maybe I should have checked the dates before installation. When I challenged him about one set being older, he got a little testy, so I asked him if they were new but stored for 10 years, would they be still as good as new? Somehow I doubt it. Lesson learned. Make sure you check the dates with the service guy before you buy.

You are correct; the tire shop should have sold you four matching (or at least close) date code tires. It seems some part of their supply chain does not rotate inventory properly. Tire dealers are set up in several ways. Some are authorized to order/buy from manufacturers like Michelin or Bridgestone; others are required to order through a distributor for that brand. And if a tire shop’s distributor does not carry the brand, they go to a general tire jobber for the product. At no time does the shop “have to take what the warehouse sends them.”

I suspect the shop didn’t look at the dates, so you probably embarrassed them. If the tires came di- rectly from the manufacturer, they would have been properly stored and rotated in inventory, so they didn’t come from that source. Since they probably came from a middleman, they may have been stored correctly or not, there is no way of knowing.

You are correct in that if you have a pair of tires one year older than the other, that’s not good. The big question for you is how many kilometres you plan to put on these tires. If you are a high mileage driver, you will wear out these tires before they die of old age. If you are a low mileage driver, these tires may develop cracks and have to be discarded while they still have tread left.

The shop should have been upfront and offered you some sort of compensation, or ordered two newer tires for you. I know other shops have compensated customers with mismatched tires in the past. But they’ll only do something for you if they care about your business and their reputation. Start dealing with a higher management level.

There are no laws concerning this issue in Ontario. It is customer beware, sad but true. There is lots of information on all-season and winter tires. Is there such a thing as a summer tire that is better than an allseason tire?

Yes, it is possible to get summer-only tires. They have more dry grip and better wet grip than all-season tires. In general they will also have a higher speed rating than the allseason tires in the same size.

In order of performance, class summer tires are grouped: Grand Touring Summer, High Performance Summer, Ultra Performance Summer, Max Performance Summer, Extreme Performance Summer and finally R-compound.

R-compound is street legal but meant for track use — the tread lasts only a few days. As your go up in this class, the tires have more grip but also wear faster.

My 2003 Nissan Maxima has P225/50R17 Hankook Ventus tires with 146,000 km. They are not comfortable and have a bit of a hard ride. I don’t need high performance, more like touring, and I want them to perform well in wet conditions. I have winter tires so that is not a concern.

The two top tires in ride comfort and aquaplaning resistance are the Pirelli P7 All-season Plus and the Michelin Premier A/S. These are both Grand Touring tires and are a bit more expensive than tier two brands.

If you move down to the Standard Touring class the Continental True-Contact is best in class and the General Altimax RT43 comes close. There is a fairly significant step down between the two classes of touring tires, especially in ride comfort. Generally there is a $20 per tire price difference between touring and grand touring. John Mahler is a regular contributor to Toronto Star Wheels, thetireguy_1@hotmail.com. To reach Wheels Editor Norris McDonald, nmcdonald@thestar.ca.