Firestone Tread Separation

[OrangevaleFJR]

Sunday was the day for dad and daughter to spend together. She is 17 and therefore this is a year of many lasts. This is her last year with the soccer team that she has played on for the last 8 years. Her team was in a tournament and I went to watch her. After that, she invited me to go to a concert. I have taken her to many, many concerts and she wanted to return the favor as she plans on going to NYU next year and wont be around to dance with me at shows anymore. Santana. Great show, but the ride there was interrupted.

A vibration started and we got out to check the airpressure. All good. All looked in order with no obvious problems. Soon thereafter we got back on the road and at 35 mph about 1 mile later, the tread came off the tire partially, whipped around damaging her fender, bumper and even wripped the antenna off the top of the fender.

Firestone.

 

[radman]

 

[radman]

Actually, Orangie, I use Fireblowns almost exclusively here at the U, hundreds of them, and have had very good service from them. The SE200Insignia (Bridgestone, same as) is a good, inexpensive car tire that I have on a lot of stuff, good all around tire and good service life.

 

[ionbeam]

During Firestorms early days of exploding doughnuts in the '70s a friend of mine had an experience much like OV's daughter. Front tire blew, took out antenna, wheel well, trim down the entire side of the body and bent out the rear bumper. Fortunately no loss of control, no innocent bikers were struck and no bystanders were hurt.

 

[worldbound4now]

Ahhh, you all just made me comfortable with my choice to deviate from OEM Bridgestone/Firestone tires on my Maxima and go with the more expensive Goodyear.

 

[twowheelnut]

Ahhh, you all just made me comfortable with my choice to deviate from OEM Bridgestone/Firestone tires on my Maxima and go with the more expensive Goodyear.

Continental or Yokohama.

 

[TheRepairMan]

Ahhh, you all just made me comfortable with my choice to deviate from OEM Bridgestone/Firestone tires on my Maxima and go with the more expensive Goodyear.

Continental or Yokohama.

Dunlop, Pirelli, and Michelins here!

 

[OrangevaleFJR]

Yep...I never buy firestone either, but these Firestones came with the car when she bought it 2 months ago. Oh well.

 

[radman]

And,I should add, we recently had a recall of Goodyear Wrangler HT's for the same issue everyone blames Firestone for. The deal is, ALL tire manufacturers have had their lemons.

 

[tripletango]

Most of these failures are a result of not checking tore pressore !! Seen so many cagers running down the road with half inflated tires! hell they even manage to roll over their SUVs at far lower speeds than they normally roll over with their soft tyres.

BUT there are rubbishy tires out there that cause accidents.

BTW OV glad all was OK and no one got hurt!

 

[Dwavey]

Ah, isn't it nice to know that Firestone remains consistent. I had a set of Firestone 500's on my 75 Maverick; had three of them peel like a banana within a 50 mile stretch, first one, then two together, couldn't make it to the next service station. Been calling them Firecrackers ever since. IIRC Firestone finally admitted faulty design or workmanship or both and did a massive replacement. Didn't do me any good though, I had long rid myself of the carcasses so I couldn't satisfy them that I had a set that qualified for replacement. Haven't ridden on a Firestone since.

 

[nusman68]

Wow...you mentioned the notorious Firestone Radial 500! My dad's then-new '75 Ford station wagon came with them...he went through NINE :dribble: of those *******s in under 30K miles...not a single one made it more than 9K miles before the 'ole tread wall separation, followed by a blowout. He'd always take them back, they'd measure the tread, and then give him another one after paying a prorated price. After enough of this self abuse, he switched to Michelins and never had any more problems...with the tires. The car itself was a lemon, always overheating despite all cooling system components being replaced under warranty numerous times. He finally got a recall letter, (citing the overheating issue) saying his 400 CID engine had a crack in the block under the intake and to come in for a new motor...letter arrived in 1978, 6 mos. after he dumped it..Ah, the good old days! Michelins & Yokohamas have been great for us...but I must give high marks to the factory Goodyears that came on my wife's '05 Mustang.

 

[boogahboogah]

My first real job after high school in summer of '70 was building tires & curing inner tubes for Firestone at their Pottstown PA plant. Curing inner tubes was a hot, nasty, strenuous job.

After getting transferred out of the inner tube section, I was building (can you guess?) Firestone 500 radial tires. The design was not too good AFAIK, but the real problem was the number of steps required to build the tire the way they wanted. A regular bias ply tire required something like 7/8 steps to build the tire. The Firestone 500 radial required 23/24 separate steps, including putting small threads of string from one side of the underside of the tread rubber to the other side, supposedly to allow gas bubbles out when the tire was curing. What an atrocious design.

Also bad for the tire builder, because the 'rate' (piecework pay rate) was the same for the bias ply tires and those stupid complicated radials. Needless to say, the guys with seniority stayed on the bias ply line, and the people on the 500 radial line cut corners just to make rate.

Now don't go blaming me for your 500 radial problems, because I was too slow and methodical putting all those damn strings in just the right places and trying to build a perfect tire all the time. They moved me to an experimental sports car tire where there was no rate attached, so I made money building tires as best as I could even though I was slow doing it.

 

[Dwavey]

Damn, I was hopeful for a minute there that I had finally found someone to blame for the Firecracker 500's and could finally move past the trauma that's stuck to me all these years!

+1 on the Goodyears. Had a set on my 90 Tempo that delivered about 110k Kms before they absolutely had to be replaced. 120k Km on an OEM set of Regatta's on my vanpool's Astrovan.

Didn't have any overheating problems with the Maverick. But it more than made up for things by rusting from the inside out. :assassin: