Cracked Tire Rubber: Still Safe to Ride?

While changing my oil today, I noticed 3 small cracks on my front tire. They are the stock tires that came with the bike and I've only put 2400 miles on them but it still concerns me. I'm supposed to go on a 300+ mile ride (with twisties) tomorrow but now I'm having doubts if I should. Here are pictures of the tire, do you think it's still safe to ride on?

[Stu]

Look fine & normal to me.
Check your pressure daily

i have a fair amount of dry rot cracking down in the grooves the tires are only 9 months old would you see any concern

Originally Posted by Maestro

While changing my oil today, I noticed 3 small cracks on my front tire. They are the stock tires that came with the bike and I've only put 2400 miles on them but it still concerns me. I'm supposed to go on a 300+ mile ride (with twisties) tomorrow but now I'm having doubts if I should. Here are pictures of the tire, do you think it's still safe to ride on?

They look like normal cuts and slits that tyres get whilst normal riding. Your are right to investigate them though. What ever caused the cut could be hiding in the tyre. Not good. So long as you have a dig around a little and confirm there is nothing hiding in there and the tyre does not start to deflate, your good to go.

Originally Posted by kcowgergmm

i have a fair amount of dry rot cracking down in the grooves the tires are only 9 months old would you see any concern

That's normally a sign that the tyre has lost the elasticity that is manufactured into them. You say they are only 9 months old but how old were they before they were fitted I remember you mentioning having a bent fork caused by a previous owner, are you sure that the bike has not be layed up somewhere for a considerable time before you bought it

Have you got a picture of the tyre in question

[Stu]

My advice was based on my rear Diablo Strada That I owned from new (bought from Steve Jordan - not some dodgy online pllace) and killed it in 6 mths or so, but before it was worn out it had lots of little cuts like that

[TEC]

You can almost ignore pics 2 & 3 as they are cuts caused by you running over something, just make sure what ever it was isn't still in there (gentle probing). Pic 4 may be nothing but with pic 1 it may be something, they do look like cracks.

You say nine months, has the bike been laid up over that time, if so was the pressure dropped or left fully inflated If the later then the tyre may well be end of life but worth getting a tame trained monkey to look at it

Having just noticed the date/time of posting hope the ride went ok if you went

my bike has been running the whole time in perfect or near perfect condition it is just really small but noticeable on close inspection

Naw, I've been riding my bike almost every day since I bought it 6 months ago, so it hasn't been sitting idle. I showed these pictures to one of my buddies that rides as well and he said the first pic didn't look like something that would cause a blow out, just a deflated tire if anything. I'm going to inspect all the cracks closely though, especially the first one and see how deep it goes, as well as monitor my tire pressure closely throughout the week. Depending on that, if its not very deep, I'll probably just start carrying a can of fix-a-flat on me :P. Either way thought I'll probably get some new tires soon. Oh, and I decided to be safe rather than sorry and didn't go riding on Sunday.

Well, I just made a closer inspection of my front tire. The crack in the first picture appears to be very shallow, maybe only .5-1mm in depth The crack in the third picture is shallow as well. The deepest one is in the fourth picture at around 2-3mm, but it's directly on the tread and doesn't even make it through the whole thickness of it.