Tires: corvette tires date of manufacture, goodyear eagle f1, goodyear tires

Question
i just purchased four new goodyear tires for my 1999 corvette for 1700.00. two of the tire have a blank space where the date should be.whats up with that. the front tire is goodyear eagle f1 emt p245/45zr17, dot m68k acwr blank. the rear is goodyear eagle f1 emt p275/40 zr18  dot m6on acdr blank..the other two tires were made in 2008.please contact me if possible, because this has me worried about high speed safety. thank you ken kohls

Answer
Kenneth,

Let's review the basics:

DOT codes are a 10 to 12 digit number located near the letters "DOT".  BTW the digits can be numbers or letters.

The first 2 digits are a code for the manufacturing plant.  

The next 2 digits are a code for the tire size.  

The next 3 or 4 digits are a code for the type of tire.  

The last 3 or 4 digits are the date code.  The format is week/week/year/year or week/week/year.  These are always numbers.

Starting in the year 2000, the date coding used is 4 digits.  That means the highest number you should see for the year is 08.  Before 1999 the format was 3 digits.  1999 and 2000 are transition years, so you will find both 3 and 4 digits.

The date code only has to be on one side – and it is permissible for there to be a partial DOT code, so long as one side has the complete code.

So look on the other side of the tire.  The date code will be there.