Tyre degradation through road pollution and salt

Belenus

There are a lot of people in the world who owe their existence to rubber perishing through not being used for a long time.

Flight3287462

nigelDi said:

Use tires at the correct times of the year and try to avoid direct sunlight on the tires. 

I try and use tyres all year round.

[Deleted User]

My car had Dunlop iirc from new, were at least 5 years old (car registered in 2014 and obviously had been on them some time) and still had 3-4mm on them and no advisories on MOT that I can recall, one seemed to pick up a puncture (deflated a couple of times over night randomly) so only reason I replaced them

Belenus

nigelDi said:

Use tires at the correct times of the year and try to avoid direct sunlight on the tires. The tire deteriorates very quickly from the sun.

We park our car in front of our garage facing due east so it gets the sun on the drivers side from about mid day onwards.

Should we park the other way around 50% of the time or is that not worth the bother?

In ten years we have never noticed any degradation to the driver's side tyres.

cajef

nigelDi said:

Use tires at the correct times of the year and try to avoid direct sunlight on the tires. 

Can you tell me when the incorrect time of year to use tyres is then I know to avoid it and walk?

Belenus

cajef said:

nigelDi said:

Use tires at the correct times of the year and try to avoid direct sunlight on the tires. 

Can you tell me when the incorrect time of year to use tyres is then I know to avoid it and walk?

Always park the car under cover or in the shade and stick to night time driving only and you will be fine. 

facade

Belenus said:

nigelDi said:

Use tires at the correct times of the year and try to avoid direct sunlight on the tires. The tire deteriorates very quickly from the sun.

We park our car in front of our garage facing due east so it gets the sun on the drivers side from about mid day onwards.

Should we park the other way around 50% of the time or is that not worth the bother?

In ten years we have never noticed any degradation to the driver's side tyres.

After spending a lot of effort polishing the plastic headlights on my old car, which turn white in sunlight (who'd have thought that a car parked outside would have sunlight on it) I'm considering making some sort of opaque headlamp cozy like the ones you used to get on spotlamps, and whilst I'm at it, wheel cosies- actually the idea was to prevent rain getting onto the discs and rusting them, but they would double as tyre protectors too.

AdrianC

facade said:

After spending a lot of effort polishing the plastic headlights on my old car, which turn white in sunlight (who'd have thought that a car parked outside would have sunlight on it) I'm considering making some sort of opaque headlamp cozy like the ones you used to get on spotlamps

The "cataracts" plastic headlamps get aren't the actual plastic of the lens. They're a hard, scratchproof coating. When you "polished" them, you removed that coating.

Elmer_BeFuddled

I used this https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00A3S1RGU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 to re-coat my headlights after polishing them up. Think the little bottle I got will see me out!!