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Wife had a blowout on her Highlander yesterday with a 3 year old Continental Contact tire while out of town yesterday. Fortunately no damage to her, car or wheel. Road service guy said it looked rotten but not sure what he means by that and I haven't seen the tire in person yet. He also commented that he has changed a lot of Continental tires lately.
Been fortunate to have had very few catastrophic tire failures in my 66 years. And I don't know that I've seen one fail like this before - completely across the contact surface. Time to try another manufacturer.
Well the verdict is in - she did strike an object on the road. Fortunately (or unfortunately maybe) there was evidence when the tire was removed there were two pretty solid gouges in the inner wheel barrel made by something penetrating all the way through the tire. Probably watching for her exit instead of the immediate roadway. So the Continental tires were not at fault in any way and in fact the franchise owner said he ran them on his car even though he gets free tires. Still, they were getting real slippery after 3 years (uphill starts on wet roads usually just produce wheel spin and no motion) so she's got all new tires (we did switch brands to get a higher speed rating and wear rating) and is ready to go again. One tire was adjusted to half price under the Road Hazards Warranty we had on them.
[QUOTE=MikeM;1596349980]So much for the six year rule, eh?
QUOTE]
Definitely. If she thinks she can limp back here on the spare (full size Toyo) and lower speed secondary roads I'm going to get all of them replaced with something else.
Last edited by DansYellow66; 01-10-2018 at 01:08 PM.
Get the tire and read the embossed date code required on all tires. It's the date of manufacture. It's a 4 digit code. The first two numbers are the week of the year, the second two numbers are the year. For example, "2216" would be the 22nd week of 2016.
The reason this is important is (you should always insist that you see the dates on tires put on your car or truck) that tires can sit in warehouses or store shelves for a few days or months or even years. The clock is ticking based on these dates, not the date they were installed.
Get the tire and read the embossed date code required on all tires. It's the date of manufacture. It's a 4 digit code. The first two numbers are the week of the year, the second two numbers are the year. For example, "2216" would be the 22nd week of 2016.
The reason this is important is (you should always insist that you see the dates on tires put on your car or truck) that tires can sit in warehouses or store shelves for a few days or months or even years. The clock is ticking based on these dates, not the date they were installed.
Great picture Randy, thanks for posting it.
Small retailers are more likely to have older tires in stock than the major chains, especially in less common sizes. Just because they tend to move less volume. That's why it's always important for us as customers to pay close attention to the dates on any new tires we buy.
Dan,
Good to hear the bride and car survived unscathed. That picture looks like she may have inadvertently hit something in the road. Looks like it has been slashed across the entire face of the tread. Lots of junk on the roads today. Just a thought before we all start crucifying the tire company.
Oh, that's not a blowout
This is a BLOWOUT. Happened in my wife's '62, 70 mph on I65 north of Mobile AL. Amazingly no body damage.
OK - that beats ours.
Originally Posted by leif.anderson93
Dan,
Good to hear the bride and car survived unscathed. That picture looks like she may have inadvertently hit something in the road. Looks like it has been slashed across the entire face of the tread. Lots of junk on the roads today. Just a thought before we all start crucifying the tire company.
She said it blew out on the interstate within sight of her exit and she didn't seem to think she ran over anything. But that is a really hard to understand failure pattern for me. She may have and didn't realize it. A split right across the thread belts is just hard to fathom. The tires looked good (I hand wash our cars), rode well, held air fine and had good thread left although we noticed in the last few months that traction was down due to the rubber getting hard we assume.
The date. The date. Get the date!!!!!!!!!!!!! That tiype of tire failure doesn't look like anything to do with a DATE! It looks more to do with impact damage. You would be the one jumping to conclusions if you think date has anything to do with this failure.
Especially since the OP said the car rode smooth and the tires were round as ID'd by hand washing.
Now, if those steel belts were rusty and rotten at the break point, different story and that could have been cause by porous rubber, not time.
The date. The date. Get the date!!!!!!!!!!!!! That tiype of tire failure doesn't look like anything to do with a DATE! It looks more to do with impact damage.
Especially since the OP said the car rode smooth and the tires were round as ID'd by hand washing.
Now, if those steel belts were rusty and rotten at the break point, different story and that could have been cause by porous rubber, not time.
I agree on what that tire looks like, I still want the date.
01-10-2018, 12:36 PM
Tire Failure (Not Vette)
Wait for the date.
