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I am 62 and have worked many jobs in my 43 years in the tire industry including owner of a Retail Tire Store. First of all tire manufacturers go to great lengths to produce high quality products.

Why would the same tire installed on 2 totally different vehicles perform so differently? Science is the correct answer. Today many vehicles require specific tires for optimum results. When you make the decision to change the diameter or width of the wheel from the factory equipment, expect problems.

Your cool looking ride now upsets the balance and the geometry that took a room full of engineers to create. Sure they look nice but did you really expect to get the same mileage with those "W" "Y" or "Z" rated tire you were getting with the "S" "T" or "H" rated tires? You just changed the composition or the rubber when you moved up to those cool performace tires, what we refer to in the business as "sticky tires". Those performance tires are engineered to *** the road.

The ride typically is harsh and the rate of wear is greatly reduced. Most performance tires that are rated for 40k mikes rarely get close to 30k. Recently I had a guy driving a Hemi Challenger who was flipping mad because he only got 21k and the replacement tires cost $1600.00. He wanted me to gaurentee the replacement tires for 40k.

The guy tried to tell me that even though he bought a $70k high performace brut that he never got on it. I am still chuckling.

Another common complaint is "It has a Bubble on the sidewall". I know you didn't run over anything it just popped out by its self. I happened to be pulling into the bank one morning when I noticed one of my regular service customer pulling in ahead of me.

As she approached the driveway she cut it too short and slammed the curb. She got out and looked at the tire and got back in her car. That very afternoon she showed up at my store and started complaining about how bad the Bridgestone tires were that I sold her. I had a showroom full of customer and she just continued to complain.

I told her I was sure she hit a curb. She now went into her defensive mode which means she got real aggressive. She got real quite about the time I pulled my Iphone from my belt and played the video I shot of her inspecting her tire in the bank parking lot. She claimed she simply forgot about the incedent.

I replaced the tire at 50% but she never returned to my store. Somehow I managed to become the bad guy. Back to science. Ozone cracking very common on premuim tires, and should not be confused with dryrot.

Although it may appear to be dryrot it is a totally different condition. With todays demanding customer tire manufactures have really steped up to the plate. Many tires are built using different rubber composition in a single tire. The sidewall rubber is different than the shoulder rubber and the tread is likely to be different from both.

Take a Michelin tire it may have as many as 5 totally different rubber compositions in a single tire. Michelin tires typically ride smoother and get higher mileage because of these compositions. Michelin tends to take abuse for customers because they see UV cracking in the sidewall of a 3 year old tire and it gets progressively worse with aged. Contrarary to what you believe to be dryrot is a condition where the silicas and other additives are effected by UV.

People automatically assume the sidewall cover has something to do with the strength of the tire. It is more cosmetic than anything. The air is not held in by the outer cover. It is held by the innerliner(a tube that is built into the inside of the tire.

The innerliner needs to be damaged in order for air to leak through the sidewall. That UV cracking on the outside has no effect on the innerliner. The real strenght of the tire lays within the metal wires molded into the sidewall cover and the innerwall. Several years ago a customer arrived at me store with the complete outer sidewall cover missing.

We could literally see all the outer wires in the sidewall and the tire still held 25 psi of the required 35 psi. That was a Goodyear Tire. The driver noticed a bubble on the tire at home and drove 13 miles at highway speed causing the sidewall to shread from the tire. When we removed the tire we discovered the true cause of the bubble was air infiltration.

A couple weeks earlier the customer had the tire which had a nail in it repaired at some mom & pop shop. The technician did not ream the puncture and simply plug the tire and also failed to apply a security coat over the patch/plug. after a few days the patch started to lift allowing air to infiltrate along the sidewall wires up into the sidewall causing a bubble. As the vehicle was driven that air heated up and expanded causing the bubble to grow until it burst.

I have seen the same type of damage to a tire as a result of a technician tearing the bead of the tire during installation. Hope this helps some people understand some common tire failures

Reason of review: Good quality.

Location: Dallas, Texas

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Guest

Thank you for this insight into a wear and customer understanding (or lack thereof) problem.

Brizeyda Cxn

Why don't the bridgestones that I have had for 30 years on two other suburbans rot out like the Michelins in 15 years, if the Michelin are OK as this guy asserts.

Clearly Michelin LTX tires have a side wall failure problem due to poor rubber or manufacturing or both.

Too many people have the same problem only with Michelin. FIX this and honor your warranties, don't be an ***.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Brizeyda Cxn

Agreed rwe999 Clearly Michelin Cross Terrain tires also have sidewall composition problem that affects "the inner tire liner" because 2 of the 4 tires I had after 6 years, 2 weeks, and only 22,681 miles on my Ford Explorer would no longer hold air. Costco where I purchased them said the tires were unsafe and unrepairable.

I was out of warrenty by 15 days. My hats off to Michelins R&D (research and design) engineers for virtually exacting a life span into a tire ensuring the mandatory purchasing of another set of tires following the expiration of the warranty period. No more over priced, over advertised Michelin sodomy for me ever again. In more that forty years of owning multiple vehicles and many tire purchases have I ever encountered having to replace tires that had so much unused tread on them because of sidewall deterioration.

The factory spare which had never even been lowered or used was eleven years old and looked just like it should, -brand new and held air just fine. Michelin is not the quality manufacturer they once were and that is fact.

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