So, I was at the Syracuse Nationals this saturday, wishing I had some of the sweet rides that had come in from all over the country. Lots of fun, beautiful cars, good shows in the stands to watch, a great day. Left about 5pm to get dinner, then came back around 6:30pm for the demo derby and flame thrower cars. Just before exiting the highway, my wife and I heard a sound, like a quick, repetitive swoosh/tick, like brake noise, or a rock stuck in the tread. I assumed it was one of the two, but insepcted the tire when we parked anyways, everything was ok.

We left about 10:30pm, and sat in traffic about 30 minutes, finally got on the highway. Up to speed, about 70mph, and we're hearing the noise again. I'm coming around a gentle right hand bend, and when I finish the turn, I notice the car is wanting to continue the turn. At this point, this start happening fast. Really fast. We go from a gentle tug to a serious pull in about 2 seconds, within the next 10 seconds the front is bouncing hard and shaking to end the world, I'm out of the throttle and slowing rapidly. We had to creep about 700 yards as we were in a construction zone w/ no shoulders at all. I pull over just after expecting a flat, I find the entire top of the tread has seperated from the sidewall. No cuts anywhere, can't find a hole that caused any deflation, and I had inspected the tire not 6 hours prior. Catostropic failure. Nothing on the suspension broke, there is zero uneven wear. This was not a worn out, or under-inflated tire. It just let go, for no reason I can find. My ROH wheel is a little scratched on the edges, but only one or two on the lip that are visible, thank goodness. Little dissapointed, these are supposed to be good tires. Oh well.

Anybody else ever have trouble with a KDW like this? Just curious if this is a one off incident, or a trend. I'm digging up the reciept, we'll see if BF-Goodrich will make good on it, they are supposed to have a 6 year defect warentee.

 

i have em on all 4 rims. i love em and i feel nothing at highway speeds but keep us updated i would like to know the outcome

 

Yea, I love'd em too. They work really well with a little heat in them, great turn and burn tire. I've had better for dead straight drag lauching, but they have been one of the best I've had in any other circumstance. I will update as I hear from BF-Goodrich.

 

thats a serious thing, that could have caused an accident and threatened your life and the lives of others. I'd definately let BFGoodrich know about it and hope they didnt make a bad batch of tires so that this doesnt happen to anyone else running those tires

 

which tread pattern do you have? the traditional or the new style? I have the KDW's with the "new" style tread, and have not had any problems, and hopefully i dont have something like that happen, that could have been real ugly.

 

These are the traditional style. I will have to grab a picture, it was real ugly, for the tire anyways. A lowered third gen on a donut is a bit scary, I had a friend loan me a full size spare. Of course, my daily driver just has to be in the shop this week, so I'm cruising back and forth to work every day w/ my 3.73's and no lockup on the coverter... 18mpg is pretty good given those conditions.

 

atc,

I agree with Orr89RocZ this could have been really unfortunate but thank God you and your wife are ok. Do send a letter into BFG and take some pics of the tires both the good and the bad so they can see the tread wear. They should know what happened and that way they can take the appropriate steps. Glad to hear you two where ok do let us know what happens.

Take care,

Rabi C.

 

Glad you are all alright first of all.

I would like to see some pictures of that tire!

 

Be sure to write down the DOT code for that tire when you discuss the matter with BFG. From the DOT code, BFG can determine when and where the tire was built.

 

Here is some pictures of the carnage, and the awesome rally six slot wheel on the car now. It amazing, I'm looking at the tire, there is no damage at all to the inside sidewall of the tire, the outside looks like it just separated where the joint was. Not cool.

 

wow, you weren't kidding about the sidewall separating. that's definitely an issue with the construction of the tire, see what BFG says, makes me unsure about mine.

 

That type of separation is typical of running low tire pressures or sustaining sidewall damage from curbing or other means. The initial damage could have been done months ago, even years ago. It can take a long time for a sidewall bruise to work its way around the circumference of the sidewall, breaking cords.

There was a time when I went to the dragstrip & set my pressures down to 18psi (maybe even 15psi),,, made my runs, but when it came time to go home, I forgot to air them back up at the track. Well, I went one week or two weeks on those low pressures on the rear,,, both rears had sidewall failures after maybe a years time.

 

I inspected the tire pressure hours before the failure, it was fine, you can see from the tread on the tire that they have not been run low. I could get a better picture of the sidewall, it defiently does not have wear. I've owned the car for almost a year now, and have never needed to put air in the tire. I suppose it could have been run low at one point, it has a plug in it, but hasn't been below 32psi since I've driven it. Maybe something from the prior owner. Makes me nervous about the other tires...

 

If that tire has a plug in it,,, then it was run low on air pressure at one point.

 

Well Ive had years of dealing with tires and it does look like a damaged tire due to curb damage among other things, but on a other note depending on where the plug was it could have caused the problem, you cant by law plug a tire within a 1/4 of an inch from eather side before you get to the sidewall (if that makes sence) because of what just happened. Anywho Its good to hear that your ok and that no one has been hurt because of it, including a very nice car. Hope that helps and BFG has always been one of my fav. choices for tires the kdw's I had on the camaro let me pull alittle over 1g on the skid pad and Ive never heard of any problems with it. So I hope this is just a case of a poorly taken care of tire.

 

How much you wanna bet they just blow you off?

There'll be a blizzard in Hell before I put another set of that company's crap on any of my cars.

 

The plug is dead center in the tread, in a deep spot. Obviously it went down at one point, and may have been low for a short period of time. Like I said those, this tire did not have a leak at all, it held the air it had for the 10 months I have owned the car. I have had other tires with plugs before, and never had any of them fall apart. So, yea, the tire may have seen some less than perfect life, but it had no overt signs of abuse, I have certainly run cars with worse and never experienced this problem.

Sofa - I bet they blow it off too, anything to get out of replacing a tire.

 

I have a full set on my VW and I have had no problems. Then again, I have the new style. I have burned through probably 6 of those tires in the VW.

The Goodyear F1's OTOH SUCK. Fast wearing, no dry traction, ply and sidewall seperating pieces of garbage. When I called goodyear they accused me of exceeding their speed rating. The rating is for 186, car's theorhetical top speed is 175, power limited to 150, and governed at 130. Kiss my **** goodyear.

 

Ive seen stuff like this happen at the local repair shop I work at. I forget the particular brands, but BOTH times the people who brought their cars in were running on flats while it happened. They both looked exaclty what your pictures look like. Could it be possible you had a blowout and had to drive on it and then that happened??

 

It's a possiblity the majority of that damage was from them leaking down at highway speed. The tire went down super fast, so its hard to say what happened first. The other three are still holding up fine, I found a single other KDW that I replaced the bad one with.

 

I'm no fan of BFG and I sure as heck would not go out of my way to defend them but I don't think that is a tire defect either. I suspect your tire pressure got low on you. Sucks man, glad you caught it when you did.

 

i know how you feel. exact same thing happened to me last weekend. the tread seperated from the sidewall. no sign of it comming at all. happened to me on the highway also. i was only doin about 50 when a piece of rubber hit my pass side mirror. it was the rear tire that blew out