How to tell if your tyres are past it

Q. My Honda CBR400RR has had the same tyres on it for at least three years, possibly even longer than that.

I have Bridgestone Battlax front and rear and they have more than enough tread to see me through the winter at least (the bike had been standing around for ages before I bought it).

Should I change them as they are old now?

Matt McCreadie, email

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A. It all depends how they’ve been stored and also how old they are.

Radials have a five-year manufacturer’s warranty on them but, providing they’ve been stored correctly, you can use them for up to 10 years.

My personal advice if you don’t know their history, would be to chuck them if they’re over five years old.

You can work out the year and week of manufacture by spotting a four-digit code on the sidewall. So ‘1004’ means the tenth week of 2004.