What causes these cracks? (2 Viewers)

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May 18, 2017
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Vernon, BC
I just did the annual AT->Winter tire swap and found a whole bunch of cracks on all four of my Falken AT3W tires. 275/60/20, P-rated.

These were installed on my 2014 LX570 on May 22, 2020, at 64,000km. I'm currently at 126,000km, so that's just about exactly 62,000km, or 38,500 miles. Lots of gravel roads (frequently while towing) and lots of pavement towing, but otherwise normal, road-going use.

I've never seen such cracks on tires before, but all four of mine (haven't checked the spare) are covered in these. All cracks are located in between the protruding tread. The sidewalls seem to be fine.

I wiped down the tires a bit at the crack locations for photos, thus the colour difference there.

One of these tires started slowly leaking air the last few weeks, but others are holding fine. Am I correct in assuming these are no longer safe to drive on and I'll have to shell out for a new set next spring?

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I'm not sure what causes it but I'm guessing dry rot. I have similar cracks between the lugs of my tractor tyres, I'm guessing the thicker rubber in the lugs put a lot of tension in the thinner rubber in between, causing larger cracks to form once the dry rot has weakened it enough.
 

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