Michelin Anakee 2's shelf life

[highland strom]

Hi all the time has come to replace both tyres on my wee and as I love the Anakee 2's I will be replacing them with another set. The thing that was concerning me was tyre dealers selling theese tyres & with the newer anakee 3's being out a while the 2's could of been sitting on there shelves for over there recommended shelf life '5yr I believe' this was only sprung to my attention when my local Garage said they would only fit them if they were under 4yr old. So as I was looking at buying through a company called Demon Tweeks £147 delivered for the pair I thought I best ring & ask them if they could tell me the date of the tyres they have in stock as it turns out they are dated feb 2016 which is great news so basiclally michelin must still be manufacturing the anakee 2's along side the newer 3's.

[kwackboy]

Michelin still make ak 2s and will for the foreseeable but not as many . As far as I know dealers are only allowed to have tyres on the shelf for two years max and tyres should be changed after 5 years worn out or not .
This should be an MOT rule but it's not ..

[Angustoyou]

No need to have that as a rule, because properly stored tyres are still as good as new for at least 5 years. There is no rule on shelf life for a tyre retailer, and even the manufacturers consider tyres up to 3 years old as brand new in terms of selling them -to retailers, accepting that it's not unreasonable for a tyre dealer to have them stored for up to a couple of years. 

No manufacturer wants a consumer to have anything but a great experience with their products, and if they needed to apply a best before date, they would.  Michelin have a best before date on their Bibmousse for just this reason.

[Woodyflyer]

Here's how to tell:

Look on the sidewall of the tyre for the DOT symbol. Follow the line of text and numbers after the DOT symbol until you reach the end. If the tyre was manufactured in the year 2000 or later, the last 4 digits give the age. The last 2 digits give the year and the preceding 2 digits give the week of manufacture. For example, the code 3606 means that the tyre was manufactured in the 36 th week of the year 20 06 .

If the tyre was manufactured before the year 2000, the code is 3 digits long. Thus 366 would indicate the 36 th week of the 6 th year of the decade. Thus, before 2000, you had to make a judgement on which decade was intended. For example, 366 could mean the 36 th week of 199 6 or 198 6 .