Tire shop in Al Barsha

Every tyre carries a four-digit DOT date code on the sidewall: the week and the year it was made. 2223 means the twenty-second week of 2023. It is the single most useful thing on the tyre and almost nobody looks at it, including when buying new ones.

The RTA's publicly stated position, given by Mohammed Waleed Nabhan of the RTA Licensing Agency in October 2020, is that a tyre's lifespan is five years from the date of manufacture and that vehicles were failed on that basis. In the same statement he also cited tyres that were seriously worn or cut, so age is one of several tyre grounds for failure rather than a standalone criterion. No published statute or standard number establishing a five-year limit could be located, so treat five years as the position to plan around rather than a clause to quote.

The mechanism behind it is not in dispute. Heat and oxygen degrade the compound and the adhesion between the rubber and the steel belts. A tyre with 6 mm of tread and a 2018 date code has plenty of grip left and a carcass you should not trust at 120 km/h in July. This is also the reason a spare that has never touched the road is not automatically a spare you can drive four hours across the country on.

Minimum tread depth in the UAE is reported as 1.6 mm for light vehicles, 2.4 mm for medium vehicles and 3.2 mm for buses and heavy trucks, measured across the central three-quarters of the tread around the full circumference. Driving on unfit tyres is reported to carry AED 500, four black points and a seven-day impound. The Ministry of Interior recorded more than 37,900 tyre-related fines across the country in 2024, so this is enforced rather than theoretical.

Take a common UAE SUV size: 265/60 R18 110H. 265 is the section width in millimetres, 60 is the aspect ratio as a percentage of that width, R18 is the rim diameter in inches, 110 is the load index and H is the speed rating. Overall diameter for that size is roughly 775 mm, which is why you cannot casually fit a 265/70 R18 instead and expect the speedometer, ABS and stability control to behave. A 265/70 R18 stands 828 mm against that 775 mm, so a 10-point change in aspect ratio on a 265 section moves rolling circumference by nearly 7 per cent, and an indicated 120 km/h becomes a real 128.

The placard on the driver's door jamb is the authority on size and pressure, not whatever the previous owner fitted and not what the shop has in stock. On UAE-market cars it usually lists two pressures, normal load and full load. If you are driving to Salalah with five people and luggage, the full-load column is the one that applies to you.

Load index is where cheap substitutions bite on this market's cars. A seven-seat SUV loaded for a weekend away, on 45C tarmac, is close to the numbers the manufacturer used. Dropping a load index to save AED 80 per tyre is the wrong saving. Speed rating matters less on a car that never exceeds the national limits, but the tyre also has to survive the heat that the rating implies it can take.

Pressure is specified cold, meaning before the car has been driven more than a couple of kilometres. A tyre checked at a filling station after a 20 minute drive in summer will read several psi high, and bleeding it down to the placard figure leaves you badly underinflated once it cools. Underinflation is what generates the heat that separates a belt, which is the failure mode behind most highway blowouts here.

That is also the argument against the nitrogen upsell. It typically runs AED 10 to 25 per tyre and is harmless, but it does not remove the need to check pressures, and on a car that never exceeds normal road speeds the benefit over air is marginal. A decent digital gauge at AED 30 to 70 is the cheapest safety equipment you will ever buy and does more.

Deflating for sand is standard practice and re-inflating before tarmac is the part people skip. General dune driving sits around 15 to 18 psi, deep or very soft sand 12 to 15 psi for experienced drivers at low speed. Driving back onto a highway at 15 psi is how a sidewall gets destroyed, so build the re-inflation stop into the trip rather than intending to do it later.

TPMS on UAE-market cars is worth respecting rather than resetting. Sensors have a battery life of their own and a sensor that has died is a warning light you will learn to ignore, on the system most likely to tell you about the slow puncture before it becomes a blowout.

Five questions, all of which have a real line item behind them, and all of which are cheaper to ask than to discover on the invoice. Is the price per tyre or per set? Are fitting, balancing, valves and disposal included, by name? Is the 5 per cent VAT inside the number you were just quoted, because UAE practice varies on whether tyre prices are advertised inclusive or exclusive? What is the date code on the tyres you are about to be given, and may you look at it before they go on? Is wheel alignment included or extra?

A shop that will state a single fitted, VAT-inclusive number per tyre before the car goes on the ramp is telling you something useful about how the rest of the job will go.

Alignment is the one that is genuinely worth paying for rather than declining. New tyres on a car with a misaligned rear axle will scrub out unevenly within months, and the printout from a proper four-wheel alignment is the evidence that it was done. Ask to see the before and after figures rather than the invoice line.

On repairs, the rule is simple and some shops will bend it. A puncture in the central tread area can be repaired properly with a combination plug and patch from the inside, after the tyre is demounted and inspected. A sidewall or shoulder puncture cannot be repaired safely at any price, and a run-flat that was driven on after losing pressure is a new tyre, not a repair. A shop that offers to plug a sidewall from the outside has told you what its standards are.