Ash

Hitting you guys up on an opinion about tire replacement in the aftermath of a blow-out I had the other night.

Coming home, I was just about at my exit ramp when I heard a huge pop followed by a crunch. I knew as soon as the pop went off that I had lost a tire. As luck would have it, I was already at my offramp so I was decelerating at this point. Judging by the crunch I heard after the pop, however, I knew that I was probably going to have some body damage as well. Turns out the tread had sheared from the sidewalls which then jambed the fender lip causing a noticeable crimp forward of the passenger rear wheel well.

Today I called insurance and had an assessment of my rim done as well to see if it was still true. It's marginally out of line but according to the shop it's a small 'hop' out of true....no big deal.

In any case, my tires probably have about 2-3000 miles on them and look pretty good. Just wondering what people's opinions would be on replacing the one damaged tire or would it be prudent to replace both rears?

As annoying as a screw can be in a tire and all the damage that can follow afterwards, I think I'm lucky...if it had happened 2 minutes earlier at a higher speed when I was in the passing lane, who knows what might have happened.

TIA for the feedback.

chris walrod

Do you know how old these tires are? This may be a determining factor if you should replace all four.

Ash

Chris,

Basically I've got about 6000 miles on the fronts, 3000 miles on the one good rear (it too replaced a tire that received a slow leak from yet another nail ) and I'll be putting another brand new rear to complete the family...it's a mix of tire mileages. FYI, I'm running Kumho Ecsta MX's...almost always on the street.

FlyYellow

very scary... glad you are ok. i always though highly of the kumho's. the sidewall shearing off sounds like a defect. i would call kumho and get another set of tires from them - i'm sure they would be delighted to give them to you for free.

boris

allill

ash,

i'm off topic here, but the car looks great. do you have any other photos of the car? i'm in the city too.



-j

David in LA

IMHO it is unlikely that a blowout like that would be due to a nail or screw...it is most likely a result of a manuf defect at Boris pointed out, or running the tire underinflated at some point and permanently damaging the integrity of the sidewall. This damage could have occured a long time ago and even though the tire pressue was since corrected the damage is done, and unfortunately hidden until a blowout. The issue is that if it was due to a since corrected underinflation, which of the tires were also underinflated? This will affect your decision as to whether to replace 1, 2 or even 4 tires.

Low profile tires combined with a heavily rear-weight biased car makes rear tires esp vulnerable to sidewall damage from underinflation. Most of the "blowout" threads I've seen on Rennlist involve rear blowouts rather than front ones...which is interesting when you consider that sidewalls of front tires are under generally more stressed than those in the rear so you would expect more front blowouts if it was a manuf defect.

BTW, this is another reason that IMHO if possible you should be mounting "heaviy load" spec tires in the rear, which unfortunately many of the more affordable tires don't have...they just have one load rating available vs Michelin, Pirelli, etc.

Ash

Hey guys...good points....thinking about it now...I wonder if the screw in the tread that I found had been lodged earlier causing a slow leak and thus the subsequent damage to the sidewall. For all I know, the screw could have been lodged earlier in the day but not noticing the rear passenger tire I could have just driven the 30-40 miles home on the highway on a fairly under-inflated wheel. Either way, however, it is all water under the bridge and a fairly good eye-opener on keeping an eye out for correct inflation. Thanks for the input.

Allil, thanks for the compliments...I don't have alot of pics of the car...the only ones I posted are from an earlier post here....scroll down near the bottom of the page

Jim Morton

Ash:

Bad news about the tire....

From my experience(s) when the tread does this, it does sound like the inflation had gone low before the "final blow".

Hope it all turns out well.

Bull

robof4, 2.5 years is not very old, and given my experience the rear is 30-35% used at 3500 miles. However, I like to replace both tires on that end of the car when one needs replacing. You might not notice the efect of replacing only one now, but very well could when one has 10,000 miles and the other 6500 miles on them.

So, to the original question, I would repalce both rear tires.

FGL28

The question I have is your Butt worth the price of a new set of tires? If in doubt change them out.