Have you ever wondered if car wheels have an expiry date? If you have, chances are that you concluded that car wheels don’t have an expiry date, since nobody ever seems to mention any such thing. The truth, however, is that they do. There does come a point when you should replace your car wheels even if they do not look worn out, simply because they have been around for too long.
The governments of various countries around the world have, in fact, begun inquiries into how long after the date of manufacture car wheels remain safe for use. This is following a number of serious and fatal accidents that involved car wheels simply disintegrating and falling apart while a driver was on the road. In many of these cases, these were not well-worn wheels, but they had been manufactured long before, and were presumably in storage for a long time before being used.
Another thing that is troubling about car wheels is that their date of manufacture is not clearly or prominently displayed. Instead, it requires that you know exactly where to look and how to translate the relevant digits from a string of them printed on the side of the car wheel. This is the only way to determine exactly when a car wheel was manufactured.
Authorities are only beginning to discover just how major a problem this is, as more and more drivers turn to discount car wheels in order to save money in these bad economic times. Many large department stores that have sections for automobile products also include a discount car wheel section. Most of the time, the car wheels offered for sale in this section are being offered at lower prices because the store has been unable to sell them for a long time. Store owners have no choice but to sell these car wheels, which are often older and more obsolete models as well, at discounted prices.
The problem is that car wheels that have been kept in storage for such long periods of time should not be sold at all. Since wheel manufacturers have not informed stores that car wheels have best by dates, however, stores continue to offer these car wheels that could potentially endanger the lives of drivers and their passengers.
So if you are thinking of purchasing new car wheels, no matter where they may be from, you should always make it a point to find out exactly when the wheel was manufactured. You can do this by locating the number that is printed on the side of the wheel, consisting of a series of digits and alphabets. You need only concern yourself with the last four digits of that number. The first two of those digits represent the week of manufacture and the last two of those digits represent the year of manufacture.
5107, for example, would then mean that a wheel had been manufactured in the 51st week of 2007. Experts have recommended that you not purchase any car wheel that was manufactured more than 6 years before the date of purchase. This will help to ensure the safety of yourself and your loved ones when traveling in your car.
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