[RickMGoldie]

My front tyres have suddenly started losing tread pieces on the outermost part of the tread.

I keep them all at 37psi cold rising to 39 on motorway run which I don't think is too low or overly high either. They are 4.5 years and 25,000 miles old, but they shouldn't be perishing yet but it looks like they are, and I have not been curbing them.

I have 2 nice Goodyears on order for fitting Friday. Saved 20% over Solus quote for non-descript cheapies :-
Goodyear Excellence
215/55 R17 W (94) x2 £219.58 incl vat & fitting. (Black Circles.com)

I know I will prefer these.

I don't think 25k miles is too bad actually, but did this rapid deterioration happen to anyone else?

The sad part was it was in Solus for insurance rear bumper replacement following me having an argument with a hidden solid thing in the overgrown verge just where I was doing a 3 point turn in some very narrow Devon roads near Zeal Monachorum. They refused to drive the car to return it to me, which alerted me to the problem. Hey ho! That's £600 this week what with the excess as well, and the rears are close to finished as well, maybe 3 months if I'm lucky.


-- Richard Goldsmith : Ampera (2012). EVangelist & Sustainability Champion.
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[Lee Dalton]

My front tyres have suddenly started losing tread pieces on the outermost part of the tread.

I keep them all at 37psi cold rising to 39 on motorway run which I don't think is too low or overly high either. They are 4.5 years and 25,000 miles old, but they shouldn't be perishing yet but it looks like they are, and I have not been curbing them.

I have 2 nice Goodyears on order for fitting Friday. Saved 20% over Solus quote for non-descript cheapies :-
Goodyear Excellence
215/55 R17 W (94) x2 £219.58 incl vat & fitting. (Black Circles.com)

I know I will prefer these.

I don't think 25k miles is too bad actually, but did this rapid deterioration happen to anyone else?

The sad part was it was in Solus for insurance rear bumper replacement following me having an argument with a hidden solid thing in the overgrown verge just where I was doing a 3 point turn in some very narrow Devon roads near Zeal Monachorum. They refused to drive the car to return it to me, which alerted me to the problem. Hey ho! That's £600 this week what with the excess as well, and the rears are close to finished as well, maybe 3 months if I'm lucky.


-- Richard Goldsmith : Ampera (2012). EVangelist & Sustainability Champion.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hmmm, makes you wonder how old the tyres were when GM purchased them !
Doesn't really seem right to fail so young otherwise ....

 

[Geoff]

I keep my tyres at about 39psi. Just coming up to 65000 miles and so far have had to buy 4 Mitchelin tyres which still have good tread. The first two were fitted due to a tyre going out of shape which Michelin gave me a 50% discount for. I put two on to keep the tread equal. The second pair was due to picking up a bolt which ruined a tyre. This soon went flat and the kit supplied instead of a spare wheel does not allow for getting a bolt in the tyre!

 

[h8ten]

The date of manufacture can be checked from a sidewall marker, sorry on phone but I'm sure a Google search will help.

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[Mike From Manchester]

Had mine replaced a couple of months ago, National Tyre man really concerned at perished condition. Only went in to see if had a slow puncture FNS as tyre pressure monitor kept warning me ( interestingly still does??) 22k miles from new May 2012.

 

[RickMGoldie]

Had mine replaced a couple of months ago, National Tyre man really concerned at perished condition. Only went in to see if had a slow puncture FNS as tyre pressure monitor kept warning me ( interestingly still does??) 22k miles from new May 2012.

So, that indicates a batch issue to me!
Thanks Mike. At least I need not worry about my usage patterns.


-- Richard Goldsmith : Ampera (2012). EVangelist & Sustainability Champion.
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[Lee Dalton]

So, that indicates a batch issue to me!
Thanks Mike. At least I need not worry about my usage patterns.


-- Richard Goldsmith : Ampera (2012). EVangelist & Sustainability Champion.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Mine hadn't really perished much when I replaced them at 45k ish. But that was only 20 months old.

So maybe a bad batch, as you mentioned.

 

[RickMGoldie]

Here is how they looked

The tread in the centre is deeper, indicating that the pressure was too low and I had kept them 4-5 psi above handbook recommendation. I have the new ones at 43 psi cold and we'll see if they wear evenly. The rear's are less unevenly worn so I'll change them to 40.
I still think they are faulty batch and we know they were manufactured in Sept 2011, so not hanging around for years before the car was made.


-- Richard Goldsmith : Ampera (2012). EVangelist & Sustainability Champion.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Lee Dalton]

Here is how they looked

The tread in the centre is deeper, indicating that the pressure was too low and I had kept them 4-5 psi above handbook recommendation. I have the new ones at 43 psi cold and we'll see if they wear evenly. The rear's are less unevenly worn so I'll change them to 40.
I still think they are faulty batch and we know they were manufactured in Sept 2011, so not hanging around for years before the car was made.


-- Richard Goldsmith : Ampera (2012). EVangelist & Sustainability Champion.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That looks nasty

 

[RickMGoldie]

That looks nasty

Quite alarming actually. I don't blame Solus for refusing to drive it once they had spotted the issue. There is canvas exposed under one of those flappy bits. I was lucky not to get a puncture. No obvious understeer because of it, so visual inspection was only symptom.


-- Richard Goldsmith : Ampera (2012). EVangelist & Sustainability Champion.
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[rikdud]

Wow I've never seen tires do that b4 & I've seen a lot of perished tires as I'm in the car trade.. I'd be getting the manufacturer to inspect them for faults !!!!

 

[DavidEJM]

Hi Richard.
Mine are the same with less than 21,000 on a 64 plate car. Though, of course, the tyres are dated 2012 on a car that was built in 2013.
I'm waiting for a warranty claim on my wheels so intend to have a couple of new tyres put on the new wheels, but I really don't think they should have gone like this. This is on the standard Michelin Energy Savers.

 

[rikdud]

Definitely sounds like a bad batch or something, wonder if there aware of the issue & are keeping quite hoping people will just replace em.. Wonder if it's worth having them independently inspected for faults, depending on cost of course...

 

[Lee Dalton]

I'm on my 4th batch of Michelin energy savers (Ampera and my last car), none did this, and I got 55k on my old car, and 45k on the Ampera (punctures and a pot hole wrecked them early).

 

[HandyAndy]

Is this the kind of damage associated with going over speed bumps? I'm thinking in particular the evil red ones which have a square base, and look like a 4-sided pyramid with the top cut off, not the full-road-width ones. These are notorious for shredding the inside walls of car tyres if you try to straddle them; but some of the pics clearly show damage to outside walls, so did those get rubbed against the pyramids' sharp corners?

The other thought is that if these tyres have been run under-inflated (as suggested by plentiful centre tread remaining), then use of the high torque (and off-the-mark acceleration) available at low speeds would mean that proportionally more of that torque has to be transferred through the corner area - which is the stiffest section, and the corners touching the tarmac are also the area least able to flex in a rotational direction. So maybe the shear strength of the rubber-to-canvas bond has been exceeded? Would only need a few millisecs of over-torque to strip this bond, just the same problem as toothed-belt drives can have if you overload those. If this is the problem, then I'd expect it 100% on the front tyres, and the rears to be intact.

 

[RickMGoldie]

Not been near any of those kind of speed bumps.
The rears are beginning to show signs, but not as bad, and there is more tread depth on the outside. Same inflation setting - higher than handbook recommended, so not technically under inflated, just empirically retrospectively seems like under inflation.

Some people swear by Michelin. I swear AT them.

-- Richard Goldsmith : Ampera (2012). EVangelist & Sustainability Champion.
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[donald]

This is a well-known problem with Michelin LRR.

This isn't news, just a product problem/material selection issue.

Mine failed on its Michelin tyres at its first MoT because of this, and I asked the dealer to replace them. At first they were reluctant, but after realising it was the 'dreaded Michelin tyre rot' then they didn't seem to question it.

It is a well known industry issue.

Mine were marked 2011, so were 3 years old.

I still have two newer Michelins on and I will be happy to be rid of those just as soon as there is a hint of degradation.

It's not damage, it is 'old-age' on tyres that age very badly.

 

[RickMGoldie]

At least I got 25k miles which some have beaten but is not unreasonable in itself. I would rather have the extra grip than the extra miles anyway, just a pity to get neither!


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[donald]

Mine were actually at 62k miles - they were covered in cuts from weakened rubber and lots of miles.

It's really just an age-related thing.

 

[RickMGoldie]

Very few of my miles overall are on straight roads like motorways and dual carriageways, so the 25k I have done is biased towards more cornering, so I was never going to get top mileage.

Brakes look good as new though!

-- Richard Goldsmith : Ampera (2012). EVangelist & Sustainability Champion.
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