ELSADOG

Hi there, I'm a newbie so please make allowances

Yesterday I had a front-nearside blowout at 80 mph on the M6. The car (E280 Sport - 2006) didn't flinch and I was able to safely move over to the hard shoulder and change the tyre although I had to wait until I got home to change my underwear.

The tyre was split open for almost 50% of it's circumference on the inside wall about an inch above the road surface area. The was wear visible on the remainder of it's circumference.

I changed to the get-you-home spare and made my way to my usual MB service centre. I was concerned because the damage to the tyre was not your usual puncture and they checked the other front tyre and declared it unsafe. They arranged for the car to go to a tyre specialists and I had 2 new Semperit tyres fitted.

When they removed the second front tyre (O/S) it was badly worn round the whole of the tyre wall. The car was checked for alignment on a state of the art piece of kit and declared perfect. There was a very slight toe-in but they said it was so minor as to not matter.

They checked out the underside and again all was well and no apparent wear or rubbing was visible. The car has been main dealer serviced, always on time and the tyre pressures have never varied. I check them every week (honest I do). The tyres had done 25,000 miles and were obviously worn but still well within legal limits. The car was serviced in June and the front (and rear) brakes were replaced and no wear was noted. The ball joints were replaced a year ago.


Edit: The tyres were Goodyear Eagle F1


Any info/knowledge would be helpful.

Plutoe

Wada way to spell tyres------although I have a good grounding with most MB electromechanical systems, however when it comes to steel belted tires I haven't got the foggiest idea what could have caused your blowout except to say the one side wall failed. Do you think you drove over a bottle of Guinness!!

Sounds like you need to take a trip to the Goodyear reseach facility

LemonSqueezy

I was going to say it was due to low tire pressure but as you stated you check weekly.. Is that a visual check or with an actual tire pressure gauge?

Or show pictures!

ELSADOG

Thanks for the reply Plutoe


First off the spelling ''Tyres'' is the correct spelling in English

Bottled Guinness is rarer than hen's teeth in Wales where I live so that scenario is unlikely. The tyres both looked to have wear around their circumference in the same place but there is nothing in contact with the tyre wall.

ELSADOG

That is with a pressure gauge, Lemon. I don't have pictures of the damaged tyres but the marking was almost identical on both tyres.

Plutoe

If it couldn't have been a bottle of Guinness, then possibly an empty tin of welsh rarebit!!

ELSADOG

LOL Welsh Rarebit doesn't usually come in tins ...... it's actually cheese on toast

N_Jay

What pressure do you keep your tyres (being nice) inflated to?


When was the last time you checked your gauge?

ELSADOG

30 psi Front and 33 psi Rear - I check my tyres at a 2 garages and occasionally on my home compressor - the pressure rarely varied more than a pound. The MB dealer checked the pressures when I took the car to them following the blow-out. They had a reading of 30/33 so that agrees with my settings.

I noticed on another site that there was a spate of this same problem in the USA a couple of years ago - same vehicle - E Class. All had the inside tyre wall affected.

Some articles on here too - https://mbworld.org/forums/w211-amg/...wall-rips.html

and http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/...ehicle-14.html

AMGAffalterbach

Goodyear makes pretty bad tires but I wouldn't expect that from an Eagle F1 which a lot of guys run... my thinking is it could be that the tires you purchased were suffering from some type of rubber rot or degradation because they were sitting there for years before you bought them. Try to bring this to Goodyear's attention, and also consider looking more into the time the tire was made (you should be able to tell by a production number on the sidewall but use some Google knowledge to identify when they were produced) and compare that to when it was subsequently purchased. Really scary that happened at highway speeds, glad you're okay.

ofishalbusiness

ELSADOG, Did your tyre look like this? (if the picture is attached?)

I recently had a vibration in the front on my 2004 E500 4M, so I removed the right front to check the brakes. When I rolled the tire away, I noticed what looked like a slice on the inside edge of the tire, but after closer inspection there were steel belts showing on and off around the whole circumference of the inside edge of the tire. The tread was also very worn (bald) all the way around the edge. I then checked the other tire and noticed the same condition. It looks like excessive negative camber in my case. Not sure, about yours, sounds like you had ball joints replaced. Maybe it was wear from before you had the parts replaced?

In my case it was difficult to see this condition with the tires on the vehicle. The rest of the tread was worn very evenly (and normal) across the rest of the tire so I was surprised to see this.

I also check my tire pressures frequently at 34/36psi. these were Kumho Ecsta AST's which I was pretty happy with otherwise.

I did take it to the MB dealer for alignment after the new tires. But they wouldn't make any adjustments because several dimensions exceeded the cross tolerance. They quoted me over $5,000 to replace basically all the suspension components. The service advisor advised if it drove straight and no other problems to keep driving it. "you can buy a lot of tires for $5k, ha,ha" . I'll save my thoughts and comments about the dealer for another time.

Sorry for the long winded response, Just trying to be helpful sharing my recent experience.

ELSADOG

Thanks for the replies.

The cuts were the same as the picture but they extended around the whole circumference of the tyre wall.

I looked back over the service history and the car was MOT'd 10 months ago - so there was no sign of any damage at that point. It was serviced in September and in that service the front brake pads and discs were replaced.

I fail to see how the damage to both tyres prior to the blow out could have been missed by the garage, who needed to remove both front wheels.

vettdvr

This is what I see in the pic. The tread has a separation from the plies and wore on the edges allowing the failure to occur. If both had the same type of failure then I would consider who made the tires. Read the sidewall, Made in Japan? Or USA / Germany. I have had ZERO luck on tires for the MB from Japan.

ofishalbusiness

The tire in the picture was made in Korea. It definitely appeared to be ply separation. I think alignment or joint wear also contributed to the failure.