Goodyear tire date code

W

wrndln

Well-known member
I bought a set of 5 Goodyear tires at a swap meet and would like to find out when they were made. The lady, whose husband passed away a few years ago, said they were about 4 years old. I don't think she is correct as they have some minor checking on the tread. The only information on the tire I could find I took a picture of and it appears to be the date coding and I posted it below. If anyone knows how to decipher the code in the picture below, please post a response. The code has no meaning to me.
Rusty Nelson

 
Goodyear MAY have made that version as late as 1955. I haven't determined if they were introduced prior to WW2. I have no clue on the date code.
 
Neat tire but at that age, I would just use for show only.

I really like the looks of the new Goodyear Balloon tires in 21 inch they really set off the '28-'29 Fords.
 
they are pre 2000 for sure. after year 2000 they went to a 4 digit date code (last 4 digits in the week/week/year/year format, pre 2000 was 3 digit week/week/year)

so they are pre 2000 for sure. 943 would be the date code which is the 94th week of a year ending in 3. my guess would be 1993 or 1983 as it cant be 2003. so you have 21 or 31 year old tires there and up to you to run them or not. It could also be 73 63 53 etc. hard to tell hence why they went to 4 digit year code...

her husband may have only bought them 3 or 4 years ago but did she say from where or who? most likely bought em from someone whos had them stashed for the last 20_ years...

http://www.barrystiretech.com/dotcoding.html

excellent reference page to tires and also includes what country they were made and how to decipher 95% of tire codes.

these goodyears were probably made in china from what i can decipher
 
SeaSlugs said:
they are pre 2000 for sure. after year 2000 they went to a 4 digit date code (last 4 digits in the week/week/year/year format, pre 2000 was 3 digit week/week/year)

so they are pre 2000 for sure. 943 would be the date code which is the 94th week of a year ending in 3. my guess would be 1993 or 1983 as it cant be 2003. so you have 21 or 31 year old tires there and up to you to run them or not. It could also be 73 63 53 etc. hard to tell hence why they went to 4 digit year code...

her husband may have only bought them 3 or 4 years ago but did she say from where or who? most likely bought em from someone whos had them stashed for the last 20_ years...

http://www.barrystiretech.com/dotcoding.html

excellent reference page to tires and also includes what country they were made and how to decipher 95% of tire codes.

these goodyears were probably made in china from what i can decipher
Click to expand...
The 94th week of a year ending in three....might want to rethink that one.:confused:
 
For those not reading the early responses, those tires are over 60 years old!!! That is NOT a guess. My educated guess is just under 70 years. I've been studying all tires for Model A's since the mid 70's. I can't remember with certainty but believe I had some of those with "S3" from during WW2.
 
Marco Tahtaras said:
For those not reading the early responses, those tires are over 60 years old!!! That is NOT a guess. My educated guess is just under 70 years. I've been studying all tires for Model A's since the mid 70's. I can't remember with certainty but believe I had some of those with "S3" from during WW2.
Click to expand...

Marco...I didn't think they produced "21's" during WW2, not a
popular size compared to "19,18, 17 or 16". Just trying to keep things
simple during the war.
So...post WW2..?
 
Coupster said:
In what Country where they made?
Click to expand...

Those are made in the USA. Goodyear and Firestone quit making tires for these in the 1950's. After that the most common were Garfields (also labeled as Sears Allstate), and Wards Riversides. The Riversides (nice tires!) were discontinued probably 1970ish. In the 70's Firestones came back (Lucas Tire) but were made in New Zealand. Maybe one of the guys there can put dates to those. Goodyears also reappeared about the same time. Some were made in Canada and had a unique sidewall tread never before seen in the USA. During the same period Goodyear also manufactured our tires in Brazil and these looked very similar to the originals. It's important to note that all those mentioned above were dual size marked as Rusty's Goodyears show.

There were no Goodyear tires available in most of the 1980's and 90's until John Kelsey reproduced the 19' tires and of course were properly sized and made in the USA. I believe his tires hit the market in 1997.

d.j. moordigian said:
Marco...I didn't think they produced "21's" during WW2, not a
popular size compared to "19,18, 17 or 16". Just trying to keep things
simple during the war.
So...post WW2..?
Click to expand...

I was purchasing used tires at swap meets and running them during the mid 70's until I could afford new tires. I ran several S3 tires on my '29 Roadster.
 
d.j. moordigian said:
Marco,

I ran google for "S3"..?...date code?...or...

Thanks
Click to expand...

I was told by some of the "older guys" that it stood for synthetic rubber and was only done during the war. I never looked it up until now. Here is an excerpt:

The onset of World War II cut off U.S. access to 90 percent of the natural rubber supply. At this time, the United States had a stockpile of about one million tons of natural rubber, a consumption rate of about 600,000 tons per year, and no commercial process to produce a general purpose synthetic rubber. Conserving, reclaiming, and stockpiling activities could not fill the gap in rubber consumption.

After the loss of the natural rubber supply, the RRC called for an annual production of 400,000 tons of general purpose synthetic rubber to be manufactured by the four large rubber companies. On December 19, 1941, Jersey Standard, Firestone, Goodrich, Goodyear, and United States Rubber Company signed a patent and information sharing agreement under the auspices of the RRC.
 
Rex_A_Lott said:
The 94th week of a year ending in three....might want to rethink that one.:confused:
Click to expand...
according to that website i linked earlier and from what ive read other places i quote:

"The last 3 or 4 digits are the date code. The format is week/week/year/year or week/week/year. These are always numbers. Starting in the year 2000, the date coding used was 4 digits. Before 1999 the format was 3 digits. 1999 and 2000 are transition years, so you will find both 3 and 4 digits used in tires produced in that time frame."


and from tirerack.com:


Tires Manufactured Before 2000
The Tire Identification Number for tires produced prior to 2000 was based on the assumption that tires would not be in service for ten years. While they were required to provide the same information as today’s tires, the week and year the tire was produced was contained in the last three digits. The 2 digits used to identify the week a tire was manufactured immediately preceded a single digit used to identify the year.


so hence why i can only guess its from 1993 1983 1973 1963 1953 etc...


i believe marco is correct in this one with them being 70+ years old...i bet they could support the car just fine with no air in them:p
 
Is it possible that the numbers are an in-house serial number/code which pre-dates the DOT number? I find it hard to believe that anything could be produced in the 94th week of a year.
Is the fourth number from the right a 1 or a 7? Maybe 1943 or 19th week of 1943

Jeff
 
other numbers before the last 3 or 4 are tire manufacturer (usually represented by a letter or combination of letter and number) sometimes there can be a few numbers right before the date code - these are typically an in house designation or model of a specific manufacturer. Like Goodyear wrangler or general grabber AT2.

anywhoo i just realized what i said about there being more than 52 weeks in a year....

researching more and more the "old" 3 digit date code system only goes back to 1972 when most of the tire manufactuers started to standardize. before then it was whatever the manufactuer wanted to do for a tire code... firestone was doing somehitng different than goodyear etc
 
"S3" was a post WWII marking that I was told said the tire has nylon cords ---previous it was cotton cords
In the 70s we got a 46 ton&1/2 truck to store and transport fleamarket stuff, it came with 6 bald original tires, some starting on the first layer of cord, we took the truck to the local tire recapper, he took a look at the tires and saw "S3" on the casing, this made everything ok, no core charge on the tires, they could be recapped ---someone else got these 1946 tires freshly recapped ---this was in the late 70s
 
The tires have "Made In USA" on them. It appears the tires would be good for a fine point original unrestored car. I can post a picture of the whole tire, but I thought just the date code area would be good enough.
Rusty Nelson
 
Kurt in NJ said:
"S3" was a post WWII marking that I was told said the tire has nylon cords ---previous it was cotton cords
In the 70s we got a 46 ton&1/2 truck to store and transport fleamarket stuff, it came with 6 bald original tires, some starting on the first layer of cord, we took the truck to the local tire recapper, he took a look at the tires and saw "S3" on the casing, this made everything ok, no core charge on the tires, they could be recapped ---someone else got these 1946 tires freshly recapped ---this was in the late 70s
Click to expand...

What I found (but really never cared to know) was that there were types S1, S2, and S3 synthetic rubbers using different polymers/elastomers for specific characteristics and had nothing to to with anything else. The structure of the tire had nothing to do with the rubber designation.

Your mileage may vary.
 
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