MrShorty
Explorer Addict
- Joined
- December 27, 2001
- Messages
- 5,073
- Reaction score
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- City, State
- Spanish Fork, UT
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 92 XLT and '87 Bronco II
I'm sure most of you are aware that off brand tires are really made by the big boys -- they just put a different name on them. Ever wondered how to tell who makes a given off-brand tire? Ever wondered how to tell where your name brand tires were made? Ever wondered how to tell when your tires were made? I did some research, and have figured out how to partially decode the DOT code so you can get this information. I didn't see this information posted here, so I thought I'd put it up in case anyone was interested.
1st locate the DOT code: It will usually be on only one side of the tire, down by the rim. If you don't see it on the outside as you have your tires mounted, it should be found on the inside. It will look like this:
DOT MC(XX XXXX) WKYR
as an example: I have a Firestone tire with this as its code
OT 8XHL x.. 3900
Here's what it means:
MC -- These first two characters after DOT designate the manufacturer/plant. Take these two characters and enter them into the DOT ID search field of this NHTSA search page http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/manufacture/ For my example, it shows 8X as Bridgestone/Firestone in Graniteville, SC.
The X's are extra digits used by some manufacturers to identify individual tire lines and stuff. From what I can gather, these digits, when present, are only meaningful to the manufacturer.
The last four digits designate the week (WK) and year (YR) the tire was manufactured. I've seen some indication that older tires (pre-'99 or something) will sometimes only use 3 digits, where the first two indicate week, and the last one year. So a date code of 414 would be the 41st week of either 1994 or 1984. So, for my sample tire, it was made in the 39th week (late sept/early oct) of 2000.
Hopefully someone will find this information of interest. It can seem pretty trivial, but I enjoy finding trivial pieces of information like this.
1st locate the DOT code: It will usually be on only one side of the tire, down by the rim. If you don't see it on the outside as you have your tires mounted, it should be found on the inside. It will look like this:
DOT MC(XX XXXX) WKYR
as an example: I have a Firestone tire with this as its code
OT 8XHL x.. 3900Here's what it means:
MC -- These first two characters after DOT designate the manufacturer/plant. Take these two characters and enter them into the DOT ID search field of this NHTSA search page http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/manufacture/ For my example, it shows 8X as Bridgestone/Firestone in Graniteville, SC.
The X's are extra digits used by some manufacturers to identify individual tire lines and stuff. From what I can gather, these digits, when present, are only meaningful to the manufacturer.
The last four digits designate the week (WK) and year (YR) the tire was manufactured. I've seen some indication that older tires (pre-'99 or something) will sometimes only use 3 digits, where the first two indicate week, and the last one year. So a date code of 414 would be the 41st week of either 1994 or 1984. So, for my sample tire, it was made in the 39th week (late sept/early oct) of 2000.
Hopefully someone will find this information of interest. It can seem pretty trivial, but I enjoy finding trivial pieces of information like this.
