Spare tires after 20 years

[FireFox31]

What have you done to keep your spare tire safe and usable after 20+ years? Check the air pressure, check for dry rot, replace after 10 years, replace with a full size tire on a junkyard wheel? This occurs to me after posting in the P3 forum about supposedly needing to replace a doughnut after 50 miles of use. I'll take any input on that topic here as well.

I'm going to consider getting a wheel from a junkyard and mounting a full size tire on it. Either use a cheap tire or match my existing tires and rotate it in (which would make wear annoying). Apparently a full size will fit in a wagon.

[Goupil]

Full size spare will fit, I've had 205 55 16 and 205 45 17 in there. I'm doing things backward, the car is on steelies and spare is a Titan

The fact that the spare is inside the car helps a lot with longevity, I've parted out a 940 with the factory spare wheel (fullsize Michelin) and it looked really good, barely any dry rot.

[abscate]

I just don’t buy into this marketing that tires age out in 5-10 years. They can , but don’t necessarily. I’ve fought a few NY inspectors who wanted to fail tires on ‘ age’ without seeing anything wrong with them.

I don’t know anyone who replaces the spares after 10 years , and Volvo makes no recommendation to that effect

[kallekula]

Sun kills the rubber

[abscate]

Sun and ozone in big metro areas

You can’t just prance in here with a new to you Volvo, Firefox, we demand pictures

[volvolugnut]

A coworker used to work as Head of Quality at a large oring seal manufacturer. They provided orings to many industries. They would pack in black bags marked with manufacture and discard dates - generally 7 years. This was the same policy of the large oil field manufacturer I also worked for.
Personally, I try to get tires replaced after 7 to 10 years on my front row vehicles and the others somewhat longer. I do not replace spares to any schedule. I used to keep the best of full size tires when replaced and this tire became the spare.
volvolugnut

[AylmerQc]

I once installed a never-used full-size spare tire on my daily runner that I'd gotten from another Volvo that I was scrapping.
It took a few weeks, maybe a month, before it failed.
I took the tire to Firestone, or Goodyear, to see if they would warranty it as it was "still new".
He worked hard to find the date code in his books then came back at me saying "That tire is 15 years old..."
I can't recall if I acted as if I didn't know but he said it was not covered by any warranty and explained that the inner belts or threads do start to separate after so many years. I think he said eight years, I can't recall exactly...

[abscate]

They definitely can fail on time but it isn’t a given. You don’t run a donut style spare any longer than it takes to get to a safe sport to replace the failed tire of course.

In the world of trailers it’s common to have low Mile, time failures as the low usage means the rubber doesn’t get exercised like an auto tire. There, I routinely replace small boat tires at 10 years and the big boat every 5 years That’s more because I want zero failures when I’m going boating

Funny coincidence. I literally hit the curb on Kat last week, blew out back tire, and put on the 23 year old donut and drove home one hour/44 miles at 50 mph

[454cid]

I need to pull my spare out. I have not had it out since buying the car in January. I probably should have saved the best tire that came on the car, for a spare, when I replaced them, but it didn't occur to me.

[volvolugnut]

Similar story on a set of old tires replaced on one car and installed on another for local, low speed use. In about a month, maybe 250 miles, the tires all failed within days of each other. These tires were maybe 20 years old.
volvolugnut