Pilot Road 3 failure - contentious...

[Triple J]

kerosene is a great tire softener.  old school racers used it -- coat the tire 2-3 days before the race.  nothing specific about it.

what is nearly identical to kerosene?  diesel fuel. 

if he ran thru some diesel, and never washed it off, then combined with the heat..

That would have effected the surface of the tire only though. Ryanracer is saying that this failure has started deeper within the tire, and no chemical could easily penetrate to that depth.

The underinflated answer makes more sense from an engineering standpoint.

[ducatiz]

That would have effected the surface of the tire only though. Ryanracer is saying that this failure has started deeper within the tire, and no chemical could easily penetrate to that depth.

The underinflated answer makes more sense from an engineering standpoint.

the fact that the tread was melting, and not just separating supports the chemical hypothesis.  if it was just sheets or chunks of tread coming off, i'd go with the mechanical hypo, but the fact that the tread is actually deforming seems to support a chemical reaction taking place.

It's the comment about fingerprints which gets me.. that's EXACTLY what kerosene will do to a tire.

My air pressure was dead on. My treadwear was great. I hit no debris. There is no punctures in the tire. The rubber literally melted to the point that the lateral slits in the tire became gooey and by touching them could see straight to the belts. The rubber was literally falling off in hunks in some areas.

[hcomp]

I am quite familiar with tire softening substances and thier use, i.e  Traction V, Track Magic..etc.  However, simply running through some diesel fuel will not cause a tire to come apart. If that were truly the case, you could drive onto an interstate and it would look like a junk yard of cars and other various vehicles crashed because they ran through some rubber attacking substances. You would literally have to soak the tire for over a week in diesel.  When you use traction enhancers it literally takes days of soaking to cause an action. We used an electric motor that would roll the tire in the softening substance for a minimum of 24 hours and that would more or less produce about 2-3 laps of "sticky rubber" depending on the track. That is maybe 1/64th" of an inch of rubber.  That being the case, in order to soak through the entire tread layer, they would have to be parked in a puddle of diesel for a very long time. Not only that, you would only have a localized blistering and not a pattern of blistering.
Now wit that being said, I'm sure you remember the Firestone / Explorer debaucle.  That whole thing of blistering / tread separation was simply caused by under inflation. That is the single largest causation of a tire failure.

He explained that his tire was properly inflated, but he did not say the tire was properly inflated for its entire life. If at some point the tire was under inflated and was pressured back up, it could take thousands of miles for the damage to become apparent on the exterior of the tire. This is typically why you see road gators all over the place.

I have a bit of experience with Michelin tires and their quality control is second to none in the tire industry I highly doubt it was a problem with the green tire process.  I would say with the outmost certainty that failure was caused by the tire being underinflated at some point in the tires lifespan.  

[ducatiz]

thanks for the info.  i knew underinflation was bad, never knew how bad though.  the gooey surface really needs 'splaining though.. i can see the tread separation being due to underinflation..

my comment about diesel/kerosene wasn't that he might have driven thru it, maybe he used one of those to clean the tire or perhaps as a "home" remedy softener.. he doesn't say... 

this guy just splashed some kerosene on a tire and the surface was softened almost immediately:

http://www.socalsvriders.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8681

[hcomp]

A motorcycle tire sitting in gravel will make depressions yes, was it due to kerosine, I highly doubt that.  Yes kerosine will definately do something to the surface, will it cause deeply seated damage? Yes over a significant amount of time.  

As far as inflation, yes it is really deadly critical. If you ever drive a car or bike with an under inflated tire and re-pressureize it, you are driving / riding a ticking time bomb...Is there a chemical reaction taking place.... Yes absolutely, the adhesive layer has broken down due to different mechanical fatigue and flexion properties of the belt layer, adhesive layer and the tread layer. Once that chemical / mechanical bond breaks, you have the tread layer sliding back and forth aginst the tread layer during the contact patch distortion phase of a rolling tire. This does create enough friction / temperature to reach the melting point of rubber.

[DanTheMan]

Stunters commonly ride with the read tire deflated a bit. Not sure if this guy is/was or not but that can play into things.

On another note, the PR3's handle fairly well in dirt and grave roads. 

[Monsterlover]

Good point about the stunters, but keep in mind their rear tire life is measured in hours

[caperix]

Working in the automotive industry it is amazing how often you see a tire 30% - 50% under inflated or even 100% - 200% over inflated.  Working with BMW we had a big problem with bridgestone runflat tires feathering on the edges, 80% of the time these tire were down to 10 psi when checked.  Bridgestone did issue a recall for a large number of tires because of this though.  When replacing these tires it was amazing how much damage was visable on the inside of the sidewall of the tire due to over heating from under inflation.  As a user of both michelin car & bike tires I have nothing but good things to say about them, other then they can get a little pricey. 

[sgollapalle]

I had a similar incident happen to me last year on my car, and guess where.. Mississippi.. A day after I picked up a car from the dealer in New Orleans.. The car had Bridgestones all around.

The f'ing side wall of the right rear tire separated off, spun the car 180 degrees and hit a tree after going backwards on the interstate for a few hundred feet. Luckily, no one was injured but the car..
I spoke to bridgestone and sent them the tire and got the same bull shit crap that the tire was under inflated.. I called the dealer and got the pre delivery inspection report, and they said they had put on new tires, so it must be something on the road. None of these bastards will ever tell you that it is a defective tire..

The fluctuation in day and night temperature is about 20F, which means your tire pressure will change about 3-4 psi. The air pressure gauge you use will have a 1-2psi error. Which means you will always be 3-4 psi above or below (even if you checked your tires at 6AM every morning). I have run multiple sets of other tires and never had any problems..

Guess Michelin joins my list of never to buy tires along with bridgestones.. Unless someone has an explanation that its the roads in MS..

[ducatiz]

I've seen several tire lawsuits and with car tires, it is pretty easy to tell by the wear pattern if a tire is under or over inflated.  the flat contact surface changes shape.  under inflated tires have a concave contact patch and overinflated tires have a convex contact patch. 

simply measuring the inner treads versus the outer treads can show this and it's very hard for the tire company to argue against it since their own websites show this pattern (of over/under inflation effects)

you'd need an expert witness though.

[sgollapalle]

Well, its past that already.. I will NEVER buy bridgestone ever again.. or vehicles that come with them. That will be the same advise going out to anyone that asks me for one..

[ducatiz]

Probably an overreaction. I've had bridgestones on my car and bike (Battlax) for a while now -- the Alazzurra has had Battlaxes for three iterations.. zero problems.

You had a faulty tire, they aren't perfect but they never want to own up to it because it's bad press.  Whenever a part like that goes wrong, you have to force them to make it right.  That's just the way it works...  :-/

[junior varsity]

after looking at guy's pictures, i refuse to believe those tires had that many miles.  there is no noticeable wear on anything but the dead center, hardly any dirt, chicken-strips would make up the majority of the tire.   you might have me believing he was a highway/superslab only rider if that dash is in metric units (6000 mi), but still - there's very little wear on those...   something fishy.

[justinrhenry]

I agree with the lack of mileage on the tire.  The bike may have 10k miles on it, but those def weren't the stock tires, so he had to have put them on later.