With track season is coming up as temperature rises and spring rolls in...

So I used yesterday afternoon to "prep" my car for my first track weekend...

I wash my car (yeah I know... track prep... but my windshield was getting pretty dirty, etc, so why not do the whole thing?) and strap on my set of TE37's that have been sitting in my basement all winter...

Coincidentally, there was a party I had to be at that night so with 2 TE37's on, I get a call asking me where the hell I am, so we throw on the other two and head off.

At this point, as I was driving to my friend's place and I kinda felt the car ride a little wierd... the alignment felt off or something, the car was pulling *slightly* left... being in a hurry I figured it was just some minor issue being asymmetric yokohama paradas and that I'd just put them on the wrong sides and that I'd just swap them in the morning... (in hindsight which is obviously 20/20 I should have looked into it more).

So okay, I arrive at the party at around 8pm and get hammered during the next couple hours, so I figure I should sober up for a few hours before going home (incidentally like 35 miles away). So 4am rolls around and I'm sober so I decide to go home and get some rest before I head out in the afternoon.

So I head out in the dead of night, do my usually warm up (it is pretty cold at night still) and I'm off... but now I'm noticing that I'm pulling pretty hard left now... so after a mile or two I'm like WTF, and I pull into the nearest a gas station to check my tire pressure (I had checked the two I had on before I got the call about being late).

So I get out of the car and turn on the pump, walk over to my driver side front and WTF! it's sagging quite a bit, I swear it wasn't like that before... so I pump it up to "30-35psi" (you can never really trust gas station air pumps) and it seems like it's almost regular looking but I do note that it seemed slightly puffy on the outer sidewall, so I reach into the wheel well and feel the inside wall and it seemed okay. We decide that we should nurse it home and see what the hell is going on in the morning...

So I get into the car and get ready to shift into reverse when... BANG! WTF!!!!!!! I already knew what must have happened as I get out and my front driver side tire is now flat. I couldn't believe it... the tire POPPED, I mean this is not some cheapo inner-tube bike tire on my BMX... dammit... OMFG...

I call my buddy at like 4:30-5 in the morning so he can come drive my friend that was with me in the R, home so he can take his car get my two JDM 16's and come back...

Obviously, when something like this happens, it has to be atleast 35 miles away from home and when you don't have a spare in the trunk... obviously...

I had to stay with the R, since even with a flat tire on a OEM jack, it would be a prime target... in the 1-2 hours I was waiting, two separate people checked out my R that was parked in front of the air pump at the gas station and made phone calls from their cells, one of them driving an X5 of all people, all of this while I watched from the window of the station, so I decided to sit in my car for the remainder of the time, freezing my *** off and hoping not to get mugged...

7am rolls around and my friend shows up with my 2 rims to save the day....

And here I am at 8am writing about this stupid crap because I can't sleep... So much for track day.

Here is the aftermath:





I had thought that this must have been my fault totally for not checking that tire, until I found all this rubber that poured out of the gash on the drive home...



Could this be some sort of defect that contributed to this break down, because I figure unless I running on a totally flat tire, how can there be that much rubber on the INSIDE of the tire?

So I will probably have to replace both front tires, so probably a $250+ USD lesson(s) learned is:

1. Always CHECK your tires after you mount them, even if they were perfect before you stored them.
2. Don't be in a rush to put your rims on.
3. Never trust a gas station air pump gauge.
4. Carry a GOOD tire pressure gauge at all times.
5. Never leave your car in a gas station overnight unattended.
6. Even when you win a CRAPLOAD during poker that night, doesn't mean you are going to stay lucky for long...

On the up side, atleast this did not happen on the track... though I would have checked everything before going...

Sigh... why me... why me....

 

I've never seen a tire pop like that! WTH?!?! Maybe you filled it up to 100psi??

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Cosworth &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

I've never seen a tire pop like that! WTH?!?! Maybe you filled it up to 100psi??</TD></TR></TABLE>

Exactly my reaction... I would have NEVER thought I tire could pop like that... I compared the other tire pressures (that I had checked at home) with the same gauge and it wasn't THAT far off, so I figured AT MOST, the gas station guage couldn't be more than maybe 10 psi off, so that would put me at 40-45 psi, still within safety limits and I was not even moving when this happened... so the tires were pretty much still cold...

And the odd thing was that the tire did not seem to want to fill very well, i.e. it seemed to still remain a little saggy/puffy despite adding air... which is why I was going to nurse it home and investigate in the morning...

Man, my complete faith has been shattered.... if you can't trust your tires as an R driver... what can you trust!?!?! crook:

 

looks like a defect to me....ripped at the seams

 

Is that a really, really bald street tire?

 

same thing happend to my friends flaken azenis
since the sidewall is so stiff, he didn't realize he had a flat, especially since he didn't stop, what happend is that the sidewall was rubbing on the ground, and over heated

once you try to fill it up BOOOOM the sidewall gives up, because it can no longer hold the pressure

look at the rest of the tire, i bet you will find a flat

most likely you didn't realize you had a flat, since you have such low sidewall, and basically riding on the rim, and thats the pulling feeling you felt

 

nice explaination dan

 

This fucken sucks man! I can only imagine what your feeling.

Get some rest. This is a freak of nature incident count yourself lucky you didn't get into a car wreck due to the tires.

 

Firestone bought out Yokohama...

joo guys didn't hear?

That is seriously strange, you sure it wasn't rubbing on the inner fender or something else?

 

Kinda looks like you were rubbing on something. Look at the tire more closely and see what you see - hard to tell in the pic, but it looks like rubbing.

 

^^exactly my thoughts

it was either rubbing on something....or the tire was driven flat for a bit....

you can tell by the wear line around the outside of the tire sidewall...
which would explain where the rubber chunks came from also

 

damn that's pretty horrible but yeah if you just stare at the pictures it does look like rubbage was occuring. Sorry to hear man.

 

aw mang, blowed up tyre is the suck. at least new tyres will get now

 

You are lucky that didn't happen at the track while going 60 mph.

 

damn, at least it happened when it did (but could have been more of a conventent time of night ) and not while you were driving.

 

damn, i've never seen a tire pop like that before.. so odd. But hey even though it all sucks, glad you stayed with your car and everything else is in tact. btw, nice umbrella

 

So in my 5-6 hours of "rest"... I was thinking of about it... (yeah, I was thinking about the R while sleeping... don't pretend you don't do it... )

I figure what happened was pretty close to what Dan said, albeit not to that extent. I think that the tire must have leaked somehow during the few months it was stored (why only that one tire, I have no idea) and when I put it back on it had to have been somewhat underinflated, but not flat.

Perhaps when I was feeling the slight pull of the steering wheel, it must have started riding the inner sidewall without much complaint because of how stiff it was, and perhaps after warming up it increased the pressure a little bit to help things while on the highway to the party.

Then while being parked at the party for about 7-8 hours more air must have come out as it cooled down leaving me even more underinflated somehow.

As many have pointed out, there is some rubbing marks on the tire and I believe that that was the inside rim lip rubbing on the inner sidewall while the tire must have started folding a bit when I starting heading home until I reached the gas station.

I figure this could have weakened the inner sidewall (shredded rubber that poured out of inside of the tire) to the point that when I inflated it, it wasn't really "filling" because it was probably stretching the weakened inner sidewall. And upon reaching "regular tire pressure", it probably gave way?

I don't know... there's no sense crying over spilt milk, but I'm gonna by cry at the hole in my wallet... sigh...

I guess the hole in my wallet would have hurt ALOT more if I ruined my TE37's... and I would be crying over THAT split milk...

The good thing is that the second day of my first track weekend could still be on for me... although I am now running Potenza RE010's on the front and Parada's on the back... The diameters are at most like 0.7% off or something, but my rears are probably close to an inch wider... sigh... the S2000 RWD stance I suppose...

I wonder if they would still let me on with mismatched tires/rims?

Last weekend my friend got a flat backing out of his garage when we were about to head to the track and things got cancelled as we ended up strapping a snow tire in it's place until he got a "spare" remounted onto the rim the next day...

Hopefully my track season will FINALLY get going tomorrow...

 

glad you're safe though

sux about your situation...

 

I think the pressure ran low, the tire folded over and was rubbing on itself on the inside, and rubbing on something else (suspension, the road) on the outside.

Is it possible that your car has a decent amount of negative camber in the front? If that's the case, the tire would look more inflated from the frontside but be clearly sagging in the back.

 

Damn how cold is it up there? I've heard of rubber dry-rotting, but sh*t that's pretty crazy man, luckly your rims didn't get screwed up. Better of that tire to blow on the road, then while your on the track!

 

I had a tired do that while I was doing 120mph on the Autobahn. The tires sidewall just broke down while I was driving it.

 

 

same thing happen to me with with kumho 712's.....not the whole night waiting thing...but the tire incident.

 

im not sure but before you drove it was there any bumps or anything cause it might of been doing by people with a hot screwdriver heat it up nice and red witha ligther then rub with tire and it won't pop right away but after driving and tires getting warm cause thats this guy did to another guy

 

maby you should complain ti the co?