Tyre markings

[Julian B]

I have been looking more closely at my Semperit tyres (the early type with the "bar" tread pattern) and see that there are some markings which may indicate a year of manufacture - or possibly a factory location code?

The markings on the five tyres are

• TU
  TU
  KT
  KT
  LT

The LT tyre is now u/s due to steel wires showing through on the bead, and one of the TU's has cracking on one side wall.

Anyone know anything more about these markings?

[heinkeljb]

Julian,

Best place I have found for this sort of information is this:-

http://www.carbibles.com/tyre_bible.html

There is section which explains a lot of the tyre markings, you might have to expand the section which says "additional markings".

From my brief look, the "LT" means "Light truck" - there's a section it links to for that.
The "TU" I assume means "Tubeless", but that is not what the Tyre Bible has as the markings!

Maybe the information is there, but I am not seeing it as I only looked quickly.

John

[Julian B]

John, I had looked at that website (which is indeed a fabulous site), but I'm not convinced that the LT & TU on the Semperit tyres are what they are talking about.

[HaffyHunter]

Hi Julian,
I believe the "TU" stands for the location of the plant where the tyres were made. In this case the TU stands for Turin, IT where Semperit did have a manufacturing plant. I expect that LT & KT stand for other locations but you'll need to do some research to find where Semperit's locations were at that time.
Cheers,
Steve

[Julian B]

Hi Steve - that sound very likely - thanks. On some Universal Grip tyres I have also found LE and FI. It's not easy to find the factory locations on the web, but maybe these ones stand for LEghorn & FIrenze?

[heinkeljb]

Semprit appear to have quite a good web site, why not send them an email asking? The worst that can happen is you get no reply, the best would be an explanation of what the markings mean and maybe you get some thing in between!

John

[AustHaflinger]

Semprit appear to have quite a good web site, why not send them an email asking?

And when doing that ask them when are they going to bring the original tyres back into production as there is probably a viable but small market for them.

[cascade.king]

Or ask them to sell the molds to a historic tire re-manufacturer (like Coker Tire) and let them make a batch..

I looked into importing a set of Euro swiss army tires to the states.. holy hell. Between the base cost, the shipping and the likely impounding due to non-conformation of DOT standards and tax approval.. its looking bad.

I am having doubts of ever finding 12 inch tires that work here in the USA.
Maybe I can drive over the border and buy 5 from Canada, classified as agricultural tires.

[Julian B]

I have sent an email to Semperit and will let you all know if I get a reply.