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Couldn't find a place to post this, but have a question about a tire
- Thread starter WobblyHand
- Start date
I actually had something very similar happen to me last year. Two years ago I had bought new Bridgestones for my Volvo s40. Has factory alloy wheels which are notorious for bead leaks during the winter months. On previous tires I had separated the beads on all the rims and bead sealed them. Finding the factory paint was flaking causing the rims to leak. Well when they installed the new tires they cleaned the beads and mounted the tires.
Around November going to work one frosty morning I’m going down one of our terrible roads. I hit a sharp separation of the sinking road section then about a block up my low tire light comes on. I pull over at a gas station and find a split/cut just like what you picture on the inside of my tire. My guess is the tire was low enough that when I hit that separation the point of impact on tire pinched between the rim edge and the road. Luckily I was able to get a replacement. The kicker being 1 tire has a year less than the other 3. Being you can’t detect much wear can’t you replace two instead of all four? Keep the oddball as a full spare?
Around November going to work one frosty morning I’m going down one of our terrible roads. I hit a sharp separation of the sinking road section then about a block up my low tire light comes on. I pull over at a gas station and find a split/cut just like what you picture on the inside of my tire. My guess is the tire was low enough that when I hit that separation the point of impact on tire pinched between the rim edge and the road. Luckily I was able to get a replacement. The kicker being 1 tire has a year less than the other 3. Being you can’t detect much wear can’t you replace two instead of all four? Keep the oddball as a full spare?
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- Dec 18, 2019
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I think it is possible, but not recommended for AWD to have differing tires. Two the same in the back and two the same in the front might be ok, if the different brands have similar characteristics. I will probably call Tirerack and Subaru to see what they recommend. Tires, heck everything, is darn expensive these days. I bought these tires in 2018 for $145 each. I'm expecting over $200 a copy just 6 years later.
Low profile is a very non technical, non defined term. In industry speak it's anything under and sometimes including 70 series, so essentially all tires are "low profile" on nearly all current and recent vehicles. In casual conversation, there's really no definition of where lo profile starts. except that of the person saying it. I should have been more descriptive. Especially in a text based environment. Sorry about that.
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- Dec 18, 2019
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No worries. For the most part, I see an awful lot of low profile tires out there. Inexpensive cars have higher profile. The latest Malibu/cheapest version uses 65 series. The tarted up ones have significantly lower profile.
My son did damage like that on our car recently. We think he drove too close to the edge of the road and hit the edge of the pavement. It’s country roads around here, so no curbs. It didn’t damage the rim, and he managed to do it on the inner side, still can’t figure out how he did that and not know he hit something. Maybe your wife hit the curb in the road, but didn’t realize it.
I had an S80 with the same problem, local shop had to grind the bead seal area smooth to get the tire to seal again.