Wicked Weasel

Ok this weekend at WGI I noticed a 2 inch straight slit going across 1 of my rear tires (it was not a wide slit). At first I thought that I just ran over something that slit the tire and figured it would just fill as the tire melted (not sure if that was smart thinking or not, but that is what I thought).

Anyway last night taking the tires out I noticed that the slit continues to the other side of the tire so now instead of being only 2 inches long it is much longer. Now obviously I realize that I did not just run over something, but something must be wrong with the tire. I also found the same type of scenario with one of the front tires.

I took a pic I can post tonight, but I was wondering if this is the seperation that some people were referring to back at the beginning of the season.

thanks

Bob

TRACKMAN2

the tread seperation you have is uaually normall all my kumos vics and710's show some sind of seperation either across or allong the tread. there were a couple of guys that had severe cases and in one instance a watched a new v710 explode and send a camarow into the wall , but we were not sure that it was the tire or debris on track that caused the failure. comforting i know but i would keep an eye on it but wouldnt worry excuse my typing havnt had coffe yet!!!

TRACKMAN2

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...double+warning

Falcon

I've run the 710's for a couple of years and see the "butt splice" on the thread all the time. I was told by the Kumho representative that there was nothing to worry about. I've gone through probably 50+ of these tires and never had a problem.

Chris Ingle can probably elaborate further since he runs them at the T1 races.

Wicked Weasel

thanks - it is just a little bothersome to see the tires seperating knowing that I am hitting around 150 on the back stretch of WGI.

yellow01

Do you mean like this, around the circumference?

or crosswise?

If you mean like in the picture, that line developed after about 4 sessions. 12 sessions later it looks exactly the same and appears to have actually closed in a few places as the rubber softened back over it.

I was concerned, but after going 12 more with no indications of issue, I'm not worried.

As far as the explosion, we need to be prudent in our judgement. Tires fail, we see that on TV all the time. Without knowing more it's difficult to establish a causal relationship.

Wicked Weasel

the other way - across the tire - not around the tire....

wtknght1

Ditto! What he said! I've been pounding on these V710 tires now for 3 years and have run several of them to the cord and beyond and never had any problems. I'm sure there may be others that have, but then again, no tire is perfect no matter who makes it - I've seen Hoosier's fail, Goodyear, etc. I've never had any problems with the V710 nor have I personally seen anyone have problems. Just keep the hot pressures below 40 and you'll be just fine.

And as an example of just how good these things are and how wide a performance bracket they have: Earlier this year at Road Atlanta, Butch (my crew chief) and I were doing some testing and really pounding on the V710s...up and down the pressure scale trying to see the difference. I went out for a few hot laps and then came in...Butch made some radical changes but didn't tell me what he did. I went out and turned some more laps and came in. I didn't notice any major difference in handling. He had dropped the front tires by 5 psi!!!!!! Guess how much difference it made in handling and lap times? Zero! These tires have such a huge performance band, it's really hard to screw them up.

And if you think all of that was because I wasn't going fast enough , all of those lap times were in the 1:34s and 35s. The next day, I turned two straight 1:32s in qualifying (1:32.9 and 1:32.7). Kumhos rock man!!

Wicked Weasel

added pics

yellow01

Interesting... I have had exactly what the right side of your tire looks like. Funny thing, is I use 2x10 ramps at the track with a simple 90* crosscut end (no angle so the leading edge is kind of rough/sharp), and attributed it to driving up on the ramps immediately after a run (because I was going to bleed brakes) when the rubber was real soft (poor deductive reasoning apparently ). It actually never occured to me that it was a splice splitting... hmm.

Anyway, that was after 1/2 a weekend, 3/2 weekends later the surrounding rubber has worn so the "tear" is less noticable.

I'm interested in others' opinions now that the pictures are up. thanks for posting pics.

c4cruiser

I had this same thing happen to a Hoosier A3S03 a couple years ago. I noticed it after one event and it got much worse over a couple more events. The tire was mounted so that the leading edge of the butt splice was rolling forward and that may have contributed to the tearing.

The tires were pretty muched used up at that point so I never did consider re-mounting them so the splice was going the other way.

Kuhmos are supposed to be uni-directional so the can be mounted on any corner and rotate in either direction. I would check it and if the break grows, re-mount the tire so the leading edge of the splice is not rotatating forward.

Wicked Weasel

My first thought was that I ran over something on the track, but then I had the same looking thing happen to a front tire. I figure there was now way I ran over something the exact same way on 2 differnt sides of the car....

Falcon

The butt splices I've seen on my tires never looked like that. When they show up on my tires, the carcass of the tire doesn't show up like that. That looks like a tear of some sort.

Wicked Weasel

I think it is the same thing on the other tire.

My question is why would it be across the whole tire....

FasterIsBetter

Have you considered sending the pictures to Kumho and seeing what they have to say about it? You can actually see the line running all the way across the tire. I wonder what they'd have to say, what they think might be causing it. I have a set of V710s, ran them a couple of days up at WGI earlier this month, and no problems, but I will now keep my eyes on them to be sure.

GB'sZo6

Thats is from old drag racers turning to road racing.

Just take some penicillin it will go away in a few years !

TRACKMAN2

they look ok to me have run with much worse

Dr.Ron

Bob,
stop carving eyes & a smile (smiley face) into your tires.....LOL
I agree w/ above-email pic to the manufacturer.
Ron