Check your tyres including the inside wall...
Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 9:39 pm
Bought some new wheels and thought there could be a problem with offset and caliper clearance so I took one wheel off and proffered the new one up. As I thought, the wheel wouldn't clear the caliper and I had to order some spacers. As I went to refit the wheel i had taken off I cut my finger on something sharp on what felt like the inside of the tyre wall.
The pics below show what I found when I had a proper look. The tread had split from the wall itself to form almost a 5mm tear where it had separated, running round 3/4 of the circumference! I was slightly alarmed to say the least considering I drive a spirited journey to work each day down the A303 and have not long returned from a trip to the ring. It looks to me it could have gone at any time. The wheels were aligned at APS the day before the ring trip and I'm assuming that they would've noticed and informed me of any signs of dangerous tyre wear so am presuming that the car was running too much camber and had worn the inside very thin, and that the alignment then straightened them out which stretched the profile it had formed in the camber state? Anyway, i didn't dare put the wheel back on and the car sat on the drive until I sourced some spacers for the new wheels.
So, moral of all this waffling is to check not just the tread of the tyre surface that you can see but to periodically run your finger round the inside of the tyre wall that you can't see and just feel to see if there are any abnormalities...it could save an accident.
The pics below show what I found when I had a proper look. The tread had split from the wall itself to form almost a 5mm tear where it had separated, running round 3/4 of the circumference! I was slightly alarmed to say the least considering I drive a spirited journey to work each day down the A303 and have not long returned from a trip to the ring. It looks to me it could have gone at any time. The wheels were aligned at APS the day before the ring trip and I'm assuming that they would've noticed and informed me of any signs of dangerous tyre wear so am presuming that the car was running too much camber and had worn the inside very thin, and that the alignment then straightened them out which stretched the profile it had formed in the camber state? Anyway, i didn't dare put the wheel back on and the car sat on the drive until I sourced some spacers for the new wheels.
So, moral of all this waffling is to check not just the tread of the tyre surface that you can see but to periodically run your finger round the inside of the tyre wall that you can't see and just feel to see if there are any abnormalities...it could save an accident.
its at the expense of handling of course.