This is a mistery. My son was driving home from a test, when suddenly he felt the car pulling to the side. He pulled over and saw he had a flat tire (in the front). After getting help, the mechanic told him he’d need a new tire, and when you see the picture you’ll probably think (like I did): No shit, Sherlock.
My question: My son claims he didn’t feel any impact, and nothing weird happened. We are at a loss as to what could have caused that damage. The tires are old, but I don’t think it’s that bad. Any ideas?
I’ll agree with the “tire was too old” theory, based on an experience @Bob_Blaylock and I had with a spare that proved completely inadequate. I’m not sure where he put the picture he took of it, which is why I tagged him to get his attention. The damage your picture shows does look quite similar to what we saw.
Same here. Catastrophic tread separation from some mid-90s Firestone tires, IIRC. I believe they had some issues with that at the time, as mine wasn’t an old tire. Happened at highway speeds. Had to pull off immediate from the interstate. Damn thing dented my wheel well good, too, but, luckily, there was a gas station right off the ramp and I had a donut in the trunk that was able to fit and not be impeded by the dented wheel well. (A full-size spare would not have fit in the space after it got mangled.)
It’s difficult to tell where the failure began from that image but from the description and extent of damage it is clearly a liner rupture at the sidewall propagating into partial circumferential unzipping of the carcass. Some of the damage was done as the driver progressed on the collapsed tire but as others have said an aged tire will experience ‘dry rot’, i.e. a breakdown of the elastomeric ‘rubber’ of the tire due to accumulated stress damage and environmental exposure (water, oxidation, corrosive fluids) which will result in loss of both pressure integrity and compromise of the ability of the sidewall to resist shear loading and normal flexure. This is often evidenced by fine cracking on the sidewall where it meets the tread or un more extreme cases all the way down the sidewall to the bead.
If the other tires are of similar age they should all be replaced. This one failed gracefully (despite the evident damage) but had the driver been cornering or banking when the failure occurred it could have been a very ugly loss of control accident. Although most drivers regard tires as black blobs that their car sits on, they are actually a very sophisticated component of the control and suspension system of a car and one of the most complex unified mechanism devices designed by humanity which are every bit as crucial as the suspension, steering, and powertrain of an automobile.
I had something similar happen to the front tire on my Tesla. The mechanic said the link arm (?) joint had worn, and so the camber was bad enough that the inner edge of the front tire was so worn the steel belt (wires) were poking through and breaking, although the outer part of the tread was just fine. If you didn’t bend down and peer into the wheel well, the tire looked fine. As he loaded it on the flatbed, the driver pointed out that if you looked into the wheel well, you could see the front tire on the other side was about to go too and tiny wire pieces were sticking out. This after 6 months, the tires appeared fine when I swapped off the winter tires 6 months before. (And a Tesla is a fairly heavy car, so riding mostly on a small part of the tire is going to induce excessive wear). The tires were 5 years old, so there was also normal wear on the tires, I was about due for a new set anyway. Just, I got the link arms fixed too.
Going down the highway at 70mph and the screen flashes red, “Tire pressure low, pull over immediately” - thanks to pressure sensors.
So the damage in the picture, is that on the inner side? And how’s the tire on the other side, same tread worn away on the extreme inner side?
Quite often when following other vehicles, I see the tires appear to be tilted inward (particularly jeep-y looking vehicles) and I wonder what thier tread wear patterns are like…
Here’s the picture of the failed tire. This was a spare on a 1997 Contour, and we suspect it was the one supplied at the factory. This was in about 2014, and the spare lasted a mile or less.
When I was a kid all cars had full-sized spares. No “donut”. And substantially all cars had the same size tires front and back. Neither of those things are much true anymore.
I also recall that back in the day it was normal that when you got your tires rotated, it was a 5-way rotation, with the spare cycling onto one of the other wheels and one of what had been the road tires becoming the spare. There was an official diagonal rotation pattern that was supposed to even out the wear front to back and left to right. This was in the days of bias ply tires that could be swapped from side to side. When radials came out that was verboten. I’m not sure whether that restriction has since been lifted. I can’t be arsed to check. But you could still swap front to rear on the same side. Which went out when cars, at least performance cars, started having different-sized front and rears.
When you bought new tires, typically the best looking least worn one of the old set of 5 became the new spare.
Aah, yes, Ye Olden Dayes. When a set of tires lasted 20K miles if you were diligent about rotation. Tire rotation has pretty well become a lost practice.
So the failed corner (between tread and sidewall) was on the inside? Does the car need new shocks or something that would create a tilted-in tire? How’s the other side tread wear?
I thought those were limited to truck tire re-treads, whereas new truck tires and most (all?) modern passenger car tires are for all practical purposes monolithic constructions. Is that not the case?
The majority of the gators you see roadside are truck tires. But a dry-rotted passenger car tire can fail in sorta the same way. Albeit usually in smaller chunks, not a complete peel-off of nearly all the tread as a single unit. So a car tire can lose tread, but generally doesn’t leave an obvious gator.
I lost about 50% circumference of a dry rotted tire one time. I did not go back to examine the debris field, but I did have a tire with most tread on one hemicircle and almost no tread on the opposite hemicircle.
Sorry, no it was for the OP whose tire, judging by the picture, was badly worn to the steel belts on the inside.
I’m by no means a knowledgeable car person, but very obviously yours failed on the sidewalls for I don’t know why. If the tread on the edges was badly worn too, I would say it’s from chronic underinflation (overinflation, the center wears more than the edges; underinflation, the edges wear and the sidewall flexes - bulges as it turns causing overheating). You can check for excessive overflexing of the sidewall by putting your hand on the sidewall and seeing if it is excessively hot after driving a distance. I was behind a van once on the highway with an obviously badly underinflated tire, and after about 2 miles it blew and was smoking.
However, never underestimate the ability of age or bad manufacturing to cause problems instead. I still remember the time we were driving the interstate and something went bonk-bonk-bonk. Turns out the tread was peeling off my dad’s 2-month-old tires.
I’ve also had two different tires on two different cars where the tire had a noticeable bulge in the sidewall. The mechanic speculated it could have been from hitting a bad pothole, or just a defect.
