Hello! Me and my wife bought our first Jeep, a JK Sahara unlimited. We are really excited but have a few questions.

The Jeep has 35" Pro Comp A/T tires on stock 17" wheels. There is some slight cracking between the threads but not in the sidewalls. How big of an issue is this?

With a little bit of research you can decipher the date code of your tires and find out what week and year they were made. Anything over 10 years is not acceptable for a daily driver.


Check out tirerack.com and the wheel and tire section of this forum for info on new tires if you go that route.

Please fill out your profile so we know what jeep you have. It will help us help you. And, welcome to Jeepforum.:grin2:

 

The date codes are easy. On that pic, the last 4 digit# (4016) is it. 40th week of 2016.
Six years is actually the suggested max lifespan for tires. If it's more than 6 years from that mfg. date, they should be retired.
Cracking is also a bad sign, regardless of the age of the tire. Depending on how bad it is, I wouldn't feel very comfortable on the highway with cracked, weather checked rubber.

 

Howdy I agree the stock GY SRA's pretty much suck. I went with the GY Durtrac's and can not be happier. As for the cracking in the tread area means you need new tires. There may be a lot of tread left but something is causing the tire material to harden and crack.

 

The cracks are a huge deal if you value your life (and your passengers) more than your checking account balance. A tire blowout with a skilled driver who has a firm grip of the wheel is not a big deal, but for the rest of us, who usually have one finger on the wheel and one hand on a burger or drink, it can be a rollover accident. Add the fact that jeeps are some of the most rollover prone vehicles (for the same reasons they're awesome offroad), and new tires is a safety investment. Also, new tires are great to have, and impossible to avoid forever.

You could hit an object, or corner hard, and have one of those cracks split the tire open, instantly sending you off the road. Or, you could drive another 10,000 miles without a problem and buy tires next year. You won't know which until it happens. Oh, and any rubber so old, or so UV damaged, to have visible cracks on the outside is not going to get good traction. My RV tires had great tread, but on a near panic stop, I was surprised to have the ABS go off on dry pavement. I started looking closer (my eyes are not good) and could see cracks in between the tread. I got new tires and have since stopped harder on wet pavement, without an ABS response, than those old ones did on dry.

I'm a fan of new tires (and new batteries) any time you start to wonder if they're too old.

 

Not all tire cracking is bad. We don't know what your idea of "slight cracking" is.
Take the Jeep to a tire shop. See what they have to say.

However, if you can see threads or steel in the cracks, it's time for replacement.