Beware of Michelin tires

Nevadastars wrote:
Fred, I never asked about him about tire treatment. I will give him a call today and find out. Either way, it just seems way to premature for a set of Michelins to crack like that. I have never seen tires of any kind crack that quickly around here, even when in the sun every day. In my internet search, I have been reading bad things about Michelins made in China. Although I have no idea how to tell where these were made.

I was asked to jump in on this thread. Glad to read you got your tire problems resolved at the Mich dealer.

Couple of comments. You mentioned not knowing how to learn where the tires were made. I believe that you should find "made In XXXXX" molded on the sidewall. It is also possible to de-code the DOT serial and learn the location of the plant where the tires were made, not just the country. You might want to review my blog post of Friday, August 3, 2012

Here is the DOT from my 5-1/2 year old tires.


And a shot without treatment


The only thing I do is to keep the tires under white tire covers.


I covered the topic of covers
I presented actual data in my posts Thursday, June 16, 2011, Monday, June 11, 2012, and follow-up with responses to those that didn't like my data on Wednesday, June 27, 2012.

Now as to the cracking on the Michelin tires. I have seen similar on almost new tires (not Michelin) but was able to trace that problem to the tires being in a garage where there was an Ozone generator. Were the sides of the storage building all they way to the ground and was the storage building completely closed, making it an oven in the sun? Other questions also come to mind but I think readers can see that tire condition analysis can be complex and there is seldom an easy answer to unusual conditions.