Are your tyres old? BEWARE!

I know this might seem obvious to most on this site, but I thought I was relatively intelligent (can it, Slob!), but I narrowly avoided a serious, potential disaster this week.

N.B: Tyres can perish before they wear out. Especially when they have oodles of knobbly tread to wear through & are on a (previously) low mileage vehicle like mine.

If your tyres are getting on a bit or you suspect them to be, check them. Or better still, get a reputable tyre dealer to check them for you (thankyou Tyreland in Bournemouth - didn't try to sell me stuff I didn't need. Just gave me an honest opinion, pointed out things to look out for that I'd never have spotted & fitted a couple of wicked A/T's from stock in 20 minutes or so for £114 all in. Oh, another good sign: A landy was just leaving as I arrived & another pulled up whilst I was there, you don't see that at Kwikfit!)

Anyways, I had another of those days (usually once or twice a week at the mo') when I couldn't find a good enough reason not to drive my III the 130 mile round trip to work. On the last few miles home (thank God!) I was sure I heard a slight kind of "whump, whump" sound coming from a tyre. Stopped, checked, all seemed fine & I got home without incident. It wasn't until I started up & went to pull away on Saturday that I realised I had a total flatty.

Thank "someone" again that my sparkly new farm jack had turned up on Thursday otherwise I would have had to utilise my "I've just bought a III so I'd better join the AA" membership & looked a bit of a tw*t into the bargain!

When I'd removed the wheel I found a really bloody scarey, jagged, total failure tear that followed the tread pattern around the wheel for about 6"! Had the tyre & subsequently the inner tube "gone" on the M3 or M27 slightly earlier I dread to think what the consequences for me & anyone around me could've been (c'mon, keeping a series in a single lane at speed with four good "boots" on takes a modicum of concentration, imagine a fast(ish!), total deflation at motorway(ish!) speeds during rush hour?

Sorry if I might sound to a lot of you's in here like I'm tring to teach any elderly relative the art of egg sucking, but thinking of the potential of what might have been fair sh*t me up!

If someone reads this, has a shufty at their tyres & avoids what could so easily have happened to me, then as far as I'm concerned, that's a result.

Phew!
Marcus.

You talk a lot of sense there Marcus, that bit of rubber is the main thing between you and the road. Let alone you and the M3 crash barrier. It takes about five minutes to have a quick look round your tyres and could save your life!

Yes indeed. I heard a rumour that soon all tyres will have to be less than 6 years old in order to pass the MOT. Of course, it's just a rumour but it made me think about it long enough to change the rubber on the MOG (original tyres from 1968 still going strong - now replaced by a brand new set of Continentals and a huge hole on my bank account )

you just need to walk around a transport museum and take a shuffty at the tyres on the vehickles there to see the effect time has on rubber... by the way marcus i've posted your chemistry exam here http://www.pumpkinpie.plus.com/pics009.htm

Ha ha, liked that. Couldn't have been yours Slob, the spelling was too gud!

i cant help ma bad spilling , am dislicksick. btw you don't happen to live in verwood do ya??

Here in Australia we do a lot of miles, usually at 100kph. ie it takes 2 days driving to get from Melbourne to Brisbane and use our Landcruiser for these trips rather than the Freelander for various reasons.

The Cruiser is on 750/16 Bridgestone Desert Duellers about 4 years old and recently we have had 2 blowout - total disintergration of the tyres and there was still 1/3 tread left. Had another one blow last year at 1/2 worn.

Pressures were all at manufacturers recommended

Looks like a new set of tyres before our next long trip. Be warned as it is not nice when a tyre lets go in a big way at 100kph.

In the UK 2 days driving DOES sound odd. At a pinch we can there & back again in 2 days, even if it's as far as you can go!

What do you reckon did it, heat, UV?

could just be age cos the ones i've seen in museums are all cracked and they ain't in the sun nor excess heat. but of course heat and uv can fcuk em as well or it could be a faulty batch. of course another thing that can cause tyre to die pre maturely is if the manufactors send them to the wrong place. like wot happened a few years back there was a shipment of tyre made for the florida market that found their way to scotland and they was crap because they were made for florida heat not scottish rain and cold. so it follows that if you get tyres made for a cold place they ain't gonna like the heat and therefore fall apart when you least expect it

Not sure what caused our tyres to go but they do get very hot when travelling, especially when the ambiant temp is +40C.

Next tyres will not be Bridgestone for the Cruiser even though the Freelander has the Bridgstone road tyres and rapid wear seems to be their only problem - or is it that we are doiung 1,000km plus per week in it right now.

when i did the tour of oz some years ago in a holden hx panel van it was on normal skinny tyres and i only had two blow outs, yes blow outs and that was on tarmac. the tyres where recaps cos i figured that the stones in the desert wouldn't care if i had expensive tyres or cheapo ones. the reason they went was probelly because i was running them slighty soft while in the stoney desert and i didn't re inflate them when i got back onto tarmac. i also came down a very muddy track from innaminka and past a couple of toyotas stuck in the mud. i tried to explain that carlos fandango superwide wheels wasn't a good idea while running on hard surface topped with a few inches of mud. but they wouldn't have it so i drove off in my little old van with skinny tyres and bust back suspension and them stuck with their fwd with fat tyres in about 4 inches of red mud. oh i also crossed the south aligator river in me van when it was about 2ft deep, no snorkel or any other wading aid unless you count taking the fan belt off.
the only time i got stuck was when i was expecting it and i had a series 3 diesel pull me out.
back to tyres ..i reckon skinnys are better than fat ones on most terrain types. they are best on stoney ground cos you have less area to hit that sharp stone. better on mud cos they push down to the hard ground underneath. but thats just my opinion y'awl can take it or leave it


slob

We use 750/16 skinnies on our Landcruiser and as you say, best everywhere except on the tarmac. Bit life is full of compromises. Even if we had fat tyres on the Cruiser, it would not be much better on the tarmac due to the suspension that would need upgrading to stop the body roll, then it would affect it offroad which is where we need the current suspension.

When I was racing rally cars (27 years of racing), the suspension modifications made a much bigger difference than the tyres ever did. I alsoways had skinny tyres on the rally car - and so did the works cars at that time. They race on better roads now so the tyres are wider as well as the new technology with tyres that have made them less fragile.