Tyre Safety
Tyre Safety
We should always be aware of looking after our tyres as our safety depends on them. However I would just like to share some information on the tyres fitted to my new Swift Bolero (Fiat Ducato), which I collected last week. Having worked for a major tyre
manufacturer for several years I couldn’t help checking the tyre pressures set and checked during the Fiat PDI and to my surprise the fronts were 10psi below the recommended 5 bar and the rears were 15psi below the recommended 5.5 bar, which is not insignificant.
The Fiat handbook clearly states 5 bar front and 5.5 bar rear for the ”camper spec” tyres fitted to motorhomes and these pressures are also given on a sticker on the passenger door post. This then prompted me to look at the manufacturing date code on the tyres
and to my surprise I discovered that two of the tyres were 2½ years old and the other two were nearly two years old. Although this is not a disaster, you would expect to have fairly new tyres fitted to a “New” motorhome, but this just highlights the fact that
some vehicles can take 12 months or more from when they are delivered to a converter until such time as the dealer sells it to its new owner.
The questions raised are where had the tyres been stored and cared for from the time when they were made until the time the vehicle was built in the Fiat factory, in this case about 1½ years, after which they spent another 12 months on the vehicle during
conversion and storage prior to delivery. For caravans most of the tyre manufacturers advise you to replace tyres every 5 years as they die of old age before they wear out, but some manufacturers have now increased this period to 10 years in line with their
recommendation for motorhomes, which may also age before wearing out, this now means that I might have to replace my tyres after seven years, losing out on the 3 years of standing around in the supply chain. I contacted Fiat Customer Service to ask if it was
acceptable to have 3 year old tyres on a new vehicle, seeking assurance that they would be safe and asking why this had happened, but their representative, named Dominic who declined to give his surname, refused to give me an answer saying they did not make
the tyres and that he would not seek answers to the questions I had good reason for asking; all he was intent on doing was telling me I wouldn’t be getting any new tyres, which as yet I had not asked for. As a long standing Fiat customer I would suggest Fiat
give Dominic some Customer Training as I found his attitude very negative and aggressive !
I wonder how far they would go in fitting old tyres, were mine the exception, or are there even older ones out there on new vehicles. This may be an isolated case but I guess very few people, if any, check the age of their tyres when buying a new vehicle
!