So these tires are 3 years old, about 4-5k on them, bought from tirerack, no signs of punctures or problems. Totally failed on me yesterday, weird random sidewall failure. Anyone seen this before? BTW I drive this car like an old fart



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Is that a 255/40 on the front or rear? What width is the rim? Thats a weird sidwall peal without contact?

 

Rear tire, stock tire size on stock rim. The rubber is soft like I can peel it, I'm thinking defective rubber?

 

I'd reach out to Continental (not sure they'll do anything but doesn't hurt to inquire). I've ran Conti's on most all of my vehicles and never had that happen, seems very odd (and unsafe). 3 years isn't that long even with only 4k miles on them.

 

Yikes - haven't seen that happen on a car tire before. Somewhat ironically, I used to run Continental tires on my road bike. It's been the only tire that's ever given me a side blow out...

 

That looks like it was caused by something coming into contact with it. Is that another little gouge above the 'E' in side and the '2' in 225?

 

Wow, that damage is really ugly, are these Extreme Contact Sports? It looks like there is other damage/scraping on the surface of that inside sidewall. Is it possible that you ran over something and didn't realize it at the time?

I put Extreme Contact Sports on my 996 last year and so far I'm not really satisfied with them. They seem to "slide around" more than other tires I have used on the 996. It seems almost as if the sidewall on these tires is too flexible and I can feel that flexing when changing direction. They provide great grip once you are in a corner but they seem to "slide" upon corner entry or changing direction. Perhaps mine were just really greasy when new.

 

There is secondary damage from riding on the flat, it wss about 0.5miles before I felt something weird on the rear end

 

I just realized that the pics are of two different areas. Are they both on the same tire?

 

u may be surprised at how quick a tire will come apart when run low on air. Is it possible that the tire was just low for a while before it went full flat?

 

I guess it's possible but a few days before this happened I put the car on the ramps to change the oil/filter, I think I would have noticed the tire being low

 

Well I thought I'd close the loop on this after finally figuring out the cause.
It seems when I got these 2 rears fitted, the tire place put 1 new valve in but left 1 the same. So due to old age it cracked and leaked, running the tire low and destroying it.
I just dropped off the wheels for new tires, and made sure the valve on the good tire was cut so can't be reused again.
Lesson learned check your valves for perishing rubber
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Been there on both truck and trailer tires, lazy tire techs.

 

This is why I run metal valve stems and aftermarket TPMS... No surprise flats and ruined tires due to a small leak..