Chevrolet SS wheel spare tire question

[jeffschevelle]

Originally Posted by Starship

All tires, regardless of manufacturer, made after Jan. 1, 1968 were marked D.O.T. Early '68 could have come with non D.O.T tires.

Curious, what source materials do you have to establish a 1/1/68 date?

Again, what I set out above is DIRECLY FROM THE ORIGINAL FEDERAL REGULATIONS. The Regulations that established what the markings had to include, size of the font, etc., and the deadline of 4/1/68 (not 1/1/68) were not even issued until 11/19/1967. Again, some mfr's could have and perhaps did get the mold revisions done in 42 days, but not all of them.

And again, the Regs specifically granted an exception allowing tags or stickers to be used until 8/1/1968 in lieu of putting the marking physically on the tire. If you read the preamble to the regulations, that concession was added at the request of tire manufacturers who said the 4/1/68 deadline (not 1/1/68) for the tire markings was going to be too burdensome to meet.

I seriously doubt tire mfr's spent a ton of money to lobby DOT to grant them an extension from 4/1/68 to 8/1/68 if they were already marking ALL their tires on 1/1/68.

And I have two original Firestone Wide Oval spares that were mounted on March and April (respectively) dated 1968 Chevelle wheels that do NOT have DOT on them.