The China-Bomb debate Put to rest
Almost every week or more a thread appears with someone with a tire question. And just as predictably the China Bomb experts come out and start decrying all Chinese made tires. Then usually they re...
Forum Discussion
Just an FYI:
Both Roger (Tireman9) and I are retired tire engineers. Unfortunately, Roger has run afoul of the moderators of this site, because his website RV Tire Safety contains some advertising - he has effectively been banned.
Roger and I worked for different manufacturers, but have extremely similar experiences. Here's my take on the subject.
First, it would be great if we could get a breakdown of the tire failures by producing plant - but that is not going to happen. Not only is that EXTREMELY proprietary (every tire manufacturer would just love to know where their competition is!), it has some built in issues with data collection.
Before I retired it was my job to do such analyses, and these things can change over time. In fact, that is the purpose of doing them - to find where the problems are and fix them. But the data I had was for the company I worked for and I had little information about other tire manufacturers.
We assumed the data collection didn't change from year to year - even though it surely did! We based our analysis on tires being returned to us - mostly for warranty - and we categorized them according to what we found. We had a HUGE(!!) database and analytical tools to help (For people who care, we made extensive use of Excel Pivot tables.)
Some background: When Ford and Firestone had their issues back in August of 2000 (or so), the situation was quite different than it is today. The US Federal government has since passed the TREAD Act, and one of those things that it requires is the reporting of tire failures on a quarterly basis - starting in 2008 (Yes, it took that long to get the system in place. It was very difficult to get the system designed and get everyone on board)
And for those who think it is the regulation differences between LT and ST tires, allow me to add some fact to chew on:
1) ST tires are rated for higher loads than LT tires - mostly because ST tires are speed restricted to 65 mph and LT tires aren't.
2) Tire manufacturers know that the government mandated testing doesn't insure a good performing product. Not only do the tires need to exceed the government minimums by a certain amount to insure that ALL tires pass, but they have to exceed the minimums by another step (or 2 or 5) in order to perform satisfactorily from the consumers point of view.
So I am of the opinion that changing the government regulations for ST tires isn't the way to go. I am also of the opinion that ST tires will pass the LT tests as they are on the books now - hence the justification for not changing the regulations.
I think some of the issues lay at the trailer manufacturer's doorstep. ST tires are speed restricted to 65 mph, but the trailer manufacturers do not have sufficient warnings to that effect.
Further, they should be selecting tires with an adequate reserve (unused) load (and speed) capacity. This is basically about tire load range and size. This is was one the lessons from the Ford/Firestone situation a few years ago - and the motorized vehicle manufacturers ALL went up in tire size as a result.
OK, this post is a bit too long already, so I'll stop here and give everyone time to comment. Please note, I will talk about Chinese made tires after this part gets chewed on.
Both Roger (Tireman9) and I are retired tire engineers. Unfortunately, Roger has run afoul of the moderators of this site, because his website RV Tire Safety contains some advertising - he has effectively been banned.
Roger and I worked for different manufacturers, but have extremely similar experiences. Here's my take on the subject.
First, it would be great if we could get a breakdown of the tire failures by producing plant - but that is not going to happen. Not only is that EXTREMELY proprietary (every tire manufacturer would just love to know where their competition is!), it has some built in issues with data collection.
Before I retired it was my job to do such analyses, and these things can change over time. In fact, that is the purpose of doing them - to find where the problems are and fix them. But the data I had was for the company I worked for and I had little information about other tire manufacturers.
We assumed the data collection didn't change from year to year - even though it surely did! We based our analysis on tires being returned to us - mostly for warranty - and we categorized them according to what we found. We had a HUGE(!!) database and analytical tools to help (For people who care, we made extensive use of Excel Pivot tables.)
Some background: When Ford and Firestone had their issues back in August of 2000 (or so), the situation was quite different than it is today. The US Federal government has since passed the TREAD Act, and one of those things that it requires is the reporting of tire failures on a quarterly basis - starting in 2008 (Yes, it took that long to get the system in place. It was very difficult to get the system designed and get everyone on board)
And for those who think it is the regulation differences between LT and ST tires, allow me to add some fact to chew on:
1) ST tires are rated for higher loads than LT tires - mostly because ST tires are speed restricted to 65 mph and LT tires aren't.
2) Tire manufacturers know that the government mandated testing doesn't insure a good performing product. Not only do the tires need to exceed the government minimums by a certain amount to insure that ALL tires pass, but they have to exceed the minimums by another step (or 2 or 5) in order to perform satisfactorily from the consumers point of view.
So I am of the opinion that changing the government regulations for ST tires isn't the way to go. I am also of the opinion that ST tires will pass the LT tests as they are on the books now - hence the justification for not changing the regulations.
I think some of the issues lay at the trailer manufacturer's doorstep. ST tires are speed restricted to 65 mph, but the trailer manufacturers do not have sufficient warnings to that effect.
Further, they should be selecting tires with an adequate reserve (unused) load (and speed) capacity. This is basically about tire load range and size. This is was one the lessons from the Ford/Firestone situation a few years ago - and the motorized vehicle manufacturers ALL went up in tire size as a result.
OK, this post is a bit too long already, so I'll stop here and give everyone time to comment. Please note, I will talk about Chinese made tires after this part gets chewed on.
