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Car tire/tyre manufacturers stamp the date of manufacture on the tyre. The idea is apparently that the rubber starts to deteriorate from that date, regardless of whether it has been installed. After a certain number of months (60, typically?), the tyre is considered no longer fit for use.

It appears that manufacturers do not stamp bike tires with the date of manufacture, neither on the tyre itself nor on the sticker label; is that correct?

This is not too surprising given that many bike tyres are cheaper than car tyres and they tend to not last as long too, so 60 months start to look like an eternity for a bicycle tire. However, it becomes a bit puzzling when looking at studded mountain bike tyres (which often cost more than a car tyre) and studded fat bike tyres (which cost nearly three times the price of a car tyre).

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  • The convention may be quite different for rim strips.
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    I think Schwalbe at least stamps their tubes with the manufacturing date. I dimly recall seeing some white print on the inside of tyres as well.
    – Michael
    Commented Oct 15, 2021 at 17:59
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    If the question is "am I right" or "is that correct" there's always some detail that makes the answer "no".
    – ojs
    Commented Oct 15, 2021 at 20:09
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    Cars tend to spend more time outside where UV-light will affect the rubber. Bikes, at least most spend most of their lives inside for the benefit of the tyres
    – Carel
    Commented Oct 16, 2021 at 9:18
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    60 months? That is 5 years. I have had several bikes where the tyres did stay on way longer than that. (Maybe fewer km, but that has nothing to do with age.) My folding bike of about 2002 is still using its first set of tyres and tubes.
    – Willeke ♦
    Commented Oct 16, 2021 at 9:45
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    Grabbed a spare Bontrager R3 from the garage and it has “1152160617” printed in it. Possibly means “factory #11, machine #52, June 16th, 2017”, which is reasonable considering the date of purchase (mid-late 2019).
    – MaplePanda
    Commented Oct 17, 2021 at 6:52

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You're not correct. Non-existence is always tough to prove, because if can't find the thing you are looking for it could be either because it doesn't exist, you don't recognize it when you see it or just aren't looking hard enough. Fortunately they're easy to prove wrong. I had a look at a tire I had in closet and found this:

Stamp on Mavic Yksion Allroad

Why do I think it's the manufacturing date?

  • I bought the tire a few years ago on sale, so 2015 is a plausible manufacturing year
  • This is what manufacturing stamps in molds look like: It's a replaceable part so the edges aren't as clean as the rest of the mold. The other common style would be a circle of numbers and arrow pointing to one of them, and the arrow would again be rougher than rest of the mold.
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  • Why could not they go as far as printing 2015 instead? There are many things that 15 could mean.
    – nightrider
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 17:20
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    @nightrider because everyone else uses 2 digits, and the rest wouldn't add any value but would require extra details in the mold.
    – ojs
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 19:26
  • Looks like they at least try to keep this somewhat obfuscated.
    – nightrider
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 19:45
  • @nightrider It's better than those pseudo-clock looking date codes. Can't read the numbers on those half the time.
    – MaplePanda
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 21:15
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    compare this to Continental, who use a circle split into quarters with dots in each quarter to give you the date. It's used for warranty claims, batch tracking, etc, not for the end user.
    – Noise
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 21:19

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