Catastrophic tire failure?

MikeBur · Mar 26, 2015

Hi all,

Traveling back home late tonight I pulled up to a stop sign and the dash warned me of low tire pressure, then almost immediately by please pull off safely.

I did so and noted a 3/4 wide chunk out of my right rear 21" staggered Perf tire on my p85d:

Tesla roadside service (Fernando) was awesome. Although past 1am, got me sorted pretty quickly: car to local SC and Uber for me to home. Very happy with the service and will mail TM to reinforce this.

Normally, I'd just write this off to bad luck, though a few things strike me as strange with the tire though:

1) I was traveling 45-50 mph for about 4 miles before the warning. There was no bangs, bumps or obvious road junk.
2) There was no noise of a significant depressurization
3) these tires have ~500 miles on them and were swapped with winter tires < 2 weeks ago
4) the damage is massive and unusual - I've never seen something like this before and I've had a few punctures ;-)

what at do you all think?

Thanks, Mike

artsci · Mar 26, 2015

MikeBur said:
Hi all,

Traveling back home late tonight I pulled up to a stop sign and the dash warned me of low tire pressure, then almost immediately by please pull off safely.

I did so and noted a 3/4 wide chunk out of my right rear 21" staggered Perf tire on my p85d:
View attachment 75908

Tesla roadside service (Fernando) was awesome. Although past 1am, got me sorted pretty quickly: car to local SC and Uber for me to home. Very happy with the service and will mail TM to reinforce this.

Normally, I'd just write this off to bad luck, though a few things strike me as strange with the tire though:

1) I was traveling 45-50 mph for about 4 miles before the warning. There was no bangs, bumps or obvious road junk.
2) There was no noise of a significant depressurization
3) these tires have ~500 miles on them and were swapped with winter tires < 2 weeks ago
4) the damage is massive and unusual - I've never seen something like this before and I've had a few punctures ;-)

what at do you all think?

Thanks, Mike

Very strange. If you didn't hit any thing or it wasn't a result of a vandal trying to cut it or something like that, it's likely a production flaw. What brand tires?

Fezzik · Mar 26, 2015

Can you get a few more pics with a little more detail. Maybe even one of the whole tire?

MsElectric · Mar 26, 2015

So sorry to hear about what happened. 21" tires are much more prone to damage easily due to road debris but even for 21" wheels that's some major damage. You must have run over something... With 21" you have very little margin if you go over a pothole at speed or go over road debris at speed because there is much less tire area to absorb any impact.

Can you post more photos?

andrewket · Mar 26, 2015

Could be a production problem and covered under warranty. Definitely take more pictures. It's hard to see thus far if it's a puncture or something different. What was the ambient and road temperatures? Were the tires ever exposed to extreme cold while in storage?

EarlyAdopter · Mar 26, 2015

21" staggered Perf, so that would be Michelin PS2 tires. Michelin has a very good reputatuion. In the off chance it was a defect, I'm sure they'll want to investigate it. Regardless, with that low of mileage on them I'd expect them to replace it under warranty.

Lloyd · Mar 26, 2015

Is it possible that the tire shop cracked the rim when you swapped to winter tires two weeks ago? If I'm seeing the picture correctly, the chunk is out of the rim and not the tire???? Better picture would help.

MikeBur · Mar 26, 2015

Thanks all, here's the piece of metal the service center just pulled out of my tire / rattling around inside

That's not a tire failure - that's some crap off the road. How I never heard anything is amazing. Thank goodness it didn't happen at speed on the freeway

- - - Updated - - -

Lloyd said:
Is it possible that the tire shop cracked the rim when you swapped to winter tires two weeks ago? If I'm seeing the picture correctly, the chunk is out of the rim and not the tire???? Better picture would help.

I'll post more pictures later - though it was a wheel change (have Sottozero3's on silver 21s (yea, I know...) and these are original gray 21s with Michelin's on them).

Gizmotoy · Mar 26, 2015

Wow, that's a huge chunk of... something. Could have been a lot worse! I don't know I've ever seen a chunk that big out of a tire before.

JPP · Mar 26, 2015

Looks like a piece of a rim from another wheel.

jerry33 · Mar 26, 2015

JPP said:
Looks like a piece of a rim from another wheel.

Sure looks like to me. This is just a road hazard. If Tesla or the tire store won't do anything, contact a Michelin sales rep. They will sometimes go to bat for you when the tire is very new.

MikeBur · Mar 26, 2015

jerry33 said:
Sure looks like to me. This is just a road hazard. If Tesla or the tire store won't do anything, contact a Michelin sales rep. They will sometimes go to bat for you when the tire is very new.

Definitely a piece of another's wheel rim. Just got car back and got charged price for new tire/install... 550 bucks later I can look at the offending piece more closely:

Thats approx 2.5x 1.0 inch piece of rim.

Additionally, here's some of the tire pics (remember this was 1:30am and just had camera on phone)

I didnt think we had any kind of warranty for this on our tires, even with < 500 miles on them? How would I find that out. Tesla SC (Bellevue WA) definitely weren't offering this.

NOLA_Mike · Mar 26, 2015

MikeBur said:
I didnt think we had any kind of warranty for this on our tires, even with < 500 miles on them? How would I find that out. Tesla SC (Bellevue WA) definitely weren't offering this.

I think you would need to have a Road Hazard Warranty for that to be covered - that would not be covered under the standard tire warranty.

Mike

artsci · Mar 26, 2015

Amazing. Glad there was nothing more than tire damage and that you're ok.

MikeBur · Mar 26, 2015

NOLA_Mike said:
I think you would need to have a Road Hazard Warranty for that to be covered - that would not be covered under the standard tire warranty.

Mike

Thats what I thought too, thanks Mike

- - - Updated - - -

artsci said:
Amazing. Glad there was nothing more than tire damage and that you're ok.

Thanks. Worst tire incident I've had and glad that it happened at such a low speed.

ZBB · Mar 26, 2015

Wow...

Worst tire problem I had is I hit a ~3 inch paint scraper blade on the way into work once. I also didn't hear anything -- until I got to the office that morning and heard a hissing noise when I got out of the car. The blade was embedded in the tire. Leak was fairly slow -- so the pressure monitors didn't give me an alert (I checked the PSI and it had only lost 1-2 PSI during the drive)…

sorka · Mar 26, 2015

That's a decent price given the that tire on the Tire rack is $486. If the SC gave you the same price, the tire by itself would be $532 after tax, so they basically charged you $20 bucks for the labor.

I'm so glad I didn't get the 21" staggered wheels.

jerry33 · Mar 27, 2015

NOLA_Mike said:
I think you would need to have a Road Hazard Warranty for that to be covered - that would not be covered under the standard tire warranty.

Correct, but sometimes you can get a courtesy adjustment from the tire manufacturer's sales rep. (Not always, but it costs nothing to try)

SherSlick · Mar 27, 2015

andrewket said:
Could be a production problem and covered under warranty. Definitely take more pictures. It's hard to see thus far if it's a puncture or something different. What was the ambient and road temperatures? Were the tires ever exposed to extreme cold while in storage?

I had some tire trouble recently, and it took quite a bit of effort before they finally covered a new tire.

Catastrophic tire failure?

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