Tire Dry Rot?

I rotated my tires yesterday and noticed what looked to be dry rot cracks in the sidewalls. The crack is about 1/2" outside of the rim, the entire circumference of the tire and on all 4 tires . They're not overly deep but the location has me concerned. The tires aren't quite a year old and have about 10,000 miles on them. The tires are Cooper Discoverer ATRs. Is this something I should be concerned about and bring them back to the tire shop or just drive and forget about it?

Before anyone asks, I don't have picks, it looks like a normal dryrot crack, not too deep but you could get your fingernail into it.

 

Bueller...

 

Do you use tire shine at all? In my experience I've always thought the more I shine my tires the faster they dry rot.

 

Absolutely not just for that reason. I use a tire brush and the same soap I use to wash my truck and that's it.

 

I think that's what I'm going to have to do, take them back. Unfortunately, I haven't done it yet because I recently moved and the tire shop is an hour away now. I've never had a problem with Cooper's in the past and I've run them on almost every truck I've owned. I'll get some pictures up tonight hopefully.

Thanks for the help guys!

 

I have the same tires. Maybe I should take a closer look at them! But then again I bought mine of CL so I dont have any warranty

 

I have to dig out the paperwork to see what I've got for warranty, if any. I've had these same tires on an old Ranger as well as Cooper M+S's and my dad had the ATR's on his Chevy diesel, none have had this issue. I'll update this when I can get the truck to the tire shop.

 

Take em back to the tire shop. A lot of tire manufacturers buy back the tires when they fail early like this to find out what went wrong. It could also be considered a manufacturing defect.

 

I now you bought them a year ago, but what is the date on the tires? Should be four digits, first two are the week they were made last two are the year.

 

Good tip! I'll run out to my truck at lunch and check.

 

Warranty for sure

 

I found the 4 digit number - 0810 so it looks like they were made late February/early March of 2010 and put on my truck early June (I found the receipt of when I purchased them so they're 1 year and 1 month old). The last recall I could find online was from 2006 but I did put a call in the shop that installed them to set up an appointment to have the tires checked out. Stand by for the outcome...

 

Probably made in China. A lot of tires with USA names we assume are made in the USA are actually made in china. I have never seen a chinese made tire not dry rot.

 

Sadly it wouldn't surprise me... I'm not sure if it's true or not but I thought I read that Cooper makes Pro Comp tires also

Slight dry rot doesn't bother me, it happens. What bothers me is it's the same exact cracking pattern on all 4 tires.

 

I had a set of Coopers on my old truck and they were dry rotted... Another reason why I'll never go with Coopers ever again.

 

subbed so i cansee the outcome of this