Tire failure

Was city driving around 40 MPH when I had a flat on my 18 inch S2 rear. Was surprised at how it failed, the inner side wall began separating. The tire was getting up there in miles, but still had tread. I'm glad I wasn't going at freeway speeds. In full fairness to Michelin, I hadn't checked the tire pressure in a couple months (work has been very busy), so conceivably it might have been under-inflated as a contributing factor, however it wasn't particularly cold when the failure took place.

I replaced all four tires today, and was mulling $1,500 for new Michelin PS2's or Continental Extreme Contact DW for $925. I resisted the idea that paying 50% more translates to much better and went with the cheaper Conti's. So far, am very happy. Perhaps there is minor incremental loss (imagined or real), but for city driving with the occasional lightly aggressive driving, thought to share that saving 50% on 4 new tires seemed like a good path for a 12 year old car. If nothing else, I can replace tires more frequently as well. The differential in price seems really high given I'm not sure I could fully tell the two tires apart.

 

While the specs call for considerable negative camber at the rear and you can expect more wear on the insides, your photo suggests either too much of that or perhaps even wrong toe. I'd encourage protecting your investment with an alignment.

 

+1

 

That one tire could have had a puncture and been way down on pressure, and that led to the sidewall failure. When driving "normally" you might not notice the low pressure until the tire lets go. I've seen this happen twice, one in a 996-1 I was driving, and another time in a Boxster I was following.

I strongly suspect that tire quality had nothing to do with your incident.

Most importantly, neither you nor the car got dinged when the tire went flat, which is the important thing!

 

+2, the tyre has excessive wear on the inside. I would not rate this as sidewall failure.

 

+3 ......I'm a busy guy too but I can find 60 seconds in my day to check tire pressures.

 

+1

 

Never be too busy to be safe.

 

If you see sidewall "burn" uniformly around the entire sidewall, it usually indicates an under inflation / heat failure. Look for little burnt pieces inside of the tire. The tire may have been under inflated to begin with or may have had a very sudden pressure loss just before failure.

 

It looks like ow pressure, combined with excessive camber.

Do this for a few thousand miles, and you get this sort of result.

 

Exactly right. I had a low tire -- bad valve stem valve -- on m VW Golf. The tire went low but I never noticed it was low while driving on the freeway.

After some time I stopped to rest and after a short nap woke up and got out to stretch and walking around the car spotted the right rear tire flat.

I had driven the tire low on air, so low that the belts were showing on *both* the inner and outer edges of the tire. The tire was probably just minutes from blowing out when I stopped for a rest.

Fortunately that didn't happen and all that did happen was I did a quick tire swap using the full size spare and I was on my way.