winkyb wrote:
Tireman I would have said under inflation or over loading.As the side wall damage is the same all the way around.I think most of the time if it is a defect in the tire the damage will be more in one part of the tire.I learned that from Firestone years ago when I had five out of eight go bad on a van and a truck.When they would blow it wound be about a nine inch blow out from bead to bead.One was at 75 MPH but you could still see where the failed area was.
Just underinflation.
Major overloading (150 - 200%) looks quite different and is an unusual occurrence. Minor overloading (10 - 30%) is more likely to show up as a long term structural detachment rather than sidewall disintegration and I have never seen melted cord that could not be traced to low inflation based on the sidewall flex location.
Tire manufacturing defects will almost certainly show up in a group of tires across a variety of vehicles as tires are made in batches or one of their components if defective will be used in a limited number of tires.
Defects, if properly reported to NHTSA will show up with a significant % of tires from a manufacturing batch based on DOT code groupings. This is one of the early warning signs used by NHTSA and investigators.
The fact that a group of tires on a single vehicle suffered rapid air loss is not in itself sufficient proof of a defect as I am not aware of any widely used tire that might be made in batches of much less than 125 per single component run. If actually defective, there would be a group of at least 20 to 50 showing up in the NHTSA database. Also the science of defect investigation does not stop with the simple statement that "These tires failed therefore they are defective" which is what "ambulance chasing" lawyers sometimes do. The investigator needs to be able to present a proven or at least suspect component and be able to point to tires without the suspect component not demonstrating identical failure condition.
Example: Today I was stopped at traffic light and had the opportunity to point out to the driver of the SUV next to me that I noticed his left rear appeared to be 10 psi low. Turned out he was headed to same AutoZone store I was so I was able to offer my pressure gauge to check his tires. He was 12 psi low in LR and the other three were 5, 6 & 8 psi low and this was hot inflation which means his cold inflation was 3 to 5 psi lower. If he had suffered multiple tire failures (which is a good possibility since technically he was driving on four "flat" tires) I have no doubt he would have thought his Michelin tires were defective as he didn't own a tire gauge and had no idea what the correct inflation should be.
winkyb
I do not doubt you had tire failures. Was there a recall involved? Any idea what was the cause of the rapid air loss? Which component that runs bead to bead was identified by the tire dealer as defective?
