Great question FrozenBiker.
I know the build dates are found on the tyre wall.
I'm a little unsure of which is which on the side of the tyre.. Any ideas?
I was lucky bought my fz6 last september and the DOT on my tire was 3212 so pretty much brand new and they are nice tires Continental Road Attack 2 did close to 500 miles on them already and gotta say amazing performance both wet and dry and in very hard twisties.
The tire was ordered through Chaparral, which appears to have come from the Parts Unlimited warehouse.
In preparation for ordering the front tire, I sent email to a few other retailers on their tire date criteria.
To be honest, a tire being made a year ago doesn't equate to a tire sitting on a bike for a year. If it is stored indoors in the correct conditions, the rubber doesn't deteriorate much if at all in that amount of time.
One of the reasons I buy mine at Cycle Gear - can put my hand on it before I put my money down. In a good environment (not too hot, no sunlight, etc) tires don't age as much as being on the bike but I still like the most recent build date possible.
to the OP:
I got PR2;s from Chapparal last August. I pretty much did the same as you, I called and asked what dates are shipping on tires going out. The woman gave me pushback but I persisted. The code examples she gave were about 6 months old.
The tires I received were 16 months old. Needless to say I wasn't thrilled with Chapparal. I don't think I would buy anything from them again
Im not entire;y sure quite how old ... yet (i ll have to go look now) ... my new back tyre is but as it had to be mmade fo my vardero thanks Honda making things slightly awkward sizes its got to be fair new as it was last week was put on :thumbup:
No response from the vendor yet, but there are other instances about them via google search.
The tire that they sent appeared fine, so I went ahead to have it mounted yesterday.
It just felt a bit lame to be mounting a November 2011 tire on the bike in 2013.
Does anyone remember Sears from a few years ago? They were selling extrememly old tires.