I will be purchasing new Michellin PSS tires for my 997. How old should the manufacture date be to make tires acceptable? 3 months? 6 months? 12 months?

Thank you in advance for your guidance.

 

Ideally, your new tires should have been produced within the last 6 months. There is no official end of life time for tires but six years is probably the end for most tires. I have been told that ultra high performance tires age better than all season tires. I have had new tires that were two years old ( from manuf. date) installed on my daily driver ( VW Touareg). This is not a problem as I will wear them out before they really age. If your 997 is a daily driver, I would guess that up to 12 months old would be OK? The rears are only going to last 15K, maybe 20K miles?

 

I was hoping the guy from Tire Rack that posts here sometimes would pitch in. In general, he has previously said something to this effect; tires that are properly warehoused (cool dry environment with little light/heat exposure) stay like new for a long time, although I forget how long but I'm pretty sure two years was within reason. That said, with most places you'll have no idea what the warehouse life for your tires have been. Of course, Tire Rack says theirs are warehoused properly and I find that believable. If you are getting them from another source that can't confidently make this claim, then I think you are probably good within several months to a year... less is better of course.

If you search around you might be able to find his prior post on this question... if not here then it may have been on Rennlist.

 

Should be no older than a year. Usually about 3-5 months depending where you buy.

 

I took a look around and guess I must have seen this post from damon@tirerack a while back. It doesn't directly address the question of age of new tires but he does have a couple of links to Tire Racks FAQs about tire age in general. The second one makes the strongest mention of how aging is reduced when properly stored.

It doesn't directly answer your question, but you may find the info useful: https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...ml#post3480926

 

Well, to state the obvious the newer the better.

As an aside my sister got new tires fitted to her Infiniti the other day and the tire store manager made a point to emphasize how "new" the tires were. Since they were rated for 80K miles it is likely the tires will "expire" on age rather than wear and the newer the tires the further into the future this will be.

Since I never have to replace tires due to age whether a set is a month old or 6 months old doesn't matter (much) to me.

But if someone doesn't use his vehicle all that much and gets tires that are already say a year or more old that means he's closer to that 6 years that Porsche considers these tires have of service life.

My opinion is 6 months is about the oldest tires I would accept. If you always have to replace tires on time vs. wear then you would be possibly giving up 6 months of tire life. 'course, you can elect to ignore or stretch that 6 year tire life number out.