Glad you're safe...

And yes, feel free to raise plenty of Hell with Firestone. If they can manage to turn out one bad batch without noticing until people get killed, they can turn out another, and not realize it until you complain.

Juggernaut

I'll bet its the Mormons fault.

Nope, its the Damn Unions...  [:D]


Aviator  [img]www.milpubs.com/aviator.gif[/img]

    I know that you probably do not want to hear this (or even see it) but after 25+ yrs in the tire biz that is not a tread seperation. Here's a brief synopsis: low profile tire, vehicle traveling at a fairly high rate of speed, object punctured tire causing air loss tire ran low and disentegrated. This whole process takes less than 60 seconds to occur, I do not work for firestone and have made a lot of personal money off of the recalls but this one is not one of those problems. If you lived near me I could inspect your failed tire and show you, that much I a sure of.

If its only on one side its not a tread seperation.  Looks like what happens on a Winston Cup car that has to run a lap on a cut tire, the inside beed gets cut by the rim, even happens on tires with innerliners.

    Sinastril it will cost you more than 300 to get quality tires for your focus just replace the one that got destroyed. Public outlook on Firestones is dim (but just think about "assault rifles" for a minute) however it is probably not theirs our their product's fault. Not saying it is all your fault but stuff happens, just deal with it.

Based on my own training and experience, I would have to say that raindog smacked that nail right on the head.  His description of the failure is correct.  Also, as long as you don't dynamite the brakes, you are better off if you lose one of the front tires rather than one of the rears, though the rear tires are more likely to go flat from a hazard than the fronts.

Try having your left rear tire go flat in four seconds at the entrance to a sweeping S-turn while you are going 95 mph chasing Santa Claus in a Chevy pickup.

That looks to me like the standard mode of tire failure today - regardless of manufacturer.  I don't know what's different about today's tires versus the ones just ten or so years ago, but all the recent failures I've seen have been pretty much as raindog described:  something caused low pressure and running at low pressure causes a sidewall failure.  Remember when the tire when "flub-flub-flub", you pulled off the road, changed the tire, and got the old one patched?  Not anymore.

One reason why we seem to have more catastrophic failures in tires these day may be because we use a lot more low profile tires.  These tires have a lot stiffer side wall so when the tire deflates it is not nearly as noticable as it was years ago.  So if the driver is not really paying close attention they will never notice the problem until the tire goes bang, at which time the inexperienced driver will panic and make all manner of ill-advised directional changes.  Thus upsetting the stability of said vehicle and possibly attempting to make the vehicle perform certain maneuvers for which this vehicle was not designed to do.  Which is what we end up with after a "soccer mom" has just experienced a blowout in her suv!  

I got a buddy who had the same thing happen on his focus, except it was the front passenger's side. He has had his ride for about a month and drives about 80 miles (roundtrip) about 3x a week. Things that make you go hmmmmmm.........

Anyone attacking Santa Claus deserves to have this happen to him. [<|:D>]

I had the same type of failure of a BF goodrich on my Jeep one night on 285 in Atlanta ,something dropped off of a tractor trailer in front of me creating a nice lightshow when it hit the road within 1-2 seconds I hit it with my back tire despite efforts to centerline it -swerveing out of lane on 285 is a bad idea unless you have the time to do it right. Anyway the tire deflated instantly and the inside rim cut the sidewall all the way around just like your photo above making it very difficult to get the speed down in a controlled manner and get off the road.But it did save the rim from road damage- all happened within seconds -- very unpleasant experience But it is a sidewall cut and not a treadwall separation only diffrence was on mine there was a hole about 3inches across in the nain body of the tread where whatever it was went in and back out of the tire to cause the initial failure. Get rid of the firestones though.

Who said anything about attackin' Santa?!?

ROFLMAO!  Spectre,  crash.

SR,
I had a Saab 9000t a few years ago and it had very low profile tires. (pirelli)

I had the SAME thing happen. The tire looked identical to yours!  I was really pissed because both the car and tires were brand new.

After I was through making a total fool out of myself at the dealership, the service manager calmly explained what had transpired.

Turns out that I had hit a small piece of angle iron in the roadway (it was actually inside the tire -- between the tire and the wheel piece.

I learned a valuable lesson from the whole adventure:

Don't buy foreign cars.  -- The tire and wheel (yup -- i ruined it too) cost me over $950 bucks.

Good Luck -- and thank goodness you weren't hurt !

Dont get Bridgestones either- they are the parent company of Firestone, and they practice "badge engineering"

Raindog is pretty much correct.  I also spent several years in the tire business and have seen failures like this many times.  You can replace just that tire if the other one isn't worn all that much.  However, you stated that you have 18K miles on this car and that they are factory tires.  So it is probably best to replace [i]both[/i] rear tires, that way you will have even tread and you can save the other one as a spare.  Yes I understand that you probably have a "mini emergance spare" but the tire is still worth saving.

As far as brands go I highly reccommend Michelin or BFGoodrich, which is owned by Michelin. I could write pages why Michelin tires are the best, but you just gotta trust me on this one.  They do cost more but you get what you pay for when it comes to tires.  Also, [b]always[/b] buy road hazard protection and new valestems.

sgtar15

    Brouhaha, if you have firestone wildernesA/T tires on a Ford vehicle you can get them replaced at any Ford dealer or goodyear company owned store free of charge.   I know Firestone had their problems, albeit a little more public than others but you shouldn't worry about that.

As has been noted by many on this thread, it was not the tire's fault.  The whole thing with Firestone is so overblown, it's like with our AR15's, the public is told something, doesn't check for themselves, and believes blindly what is said.  The whole issue was underinflation.  As for Bridgestone, I use Bridgestone Potenzas exclusively on my RX7 Turbo, it has been to 150+ on them, absolutely no problem.  I push them hard, keep them inflated, and they work great.

SinistralRifleman, what kind of Firestone was it?  I have Firestone Affinity's mounted on my Malibu.

Ok this may ruffle some feathers, but I don't get the number of deaths from massive blow outs in this whole Firestone thing. Yes they did put out  f*ked up tires, however if any of you have had a blow out you know they are not all that hard to control. I have survived several, one of them a 65 f250 no power anything on 36 inch tires at 70 mph, and never gave any of them a second thought until the whole Ford, Firestone thing. How come so many people were killed with the Firestone blow outs?

I don't buy that, I have driven too many.  The reports I have heard about lowering the tire pressure are contrary to yours. What I read was the tire pressure was lowered to try to get a more car like ride. I don't know which is true. I did spend 4 months driving an explorer 2 hours one way to work over a very twisty road at higher than posted speeds. That is why I dont buy the unstable part, if it were I think I would have noticed it in this time frame.

Not a flame just my observations.

I agree with slugbait.  I've had four near instantaneous airouts at 85 to 100 mph and dozens of slower flats (four in one day), and never lost control because I recognized what was happening and reacted correctly.  

Most people are not trained to respond properly to a "blow-out" and most don't even check the air pressure regularly.  They panic when a tire goes down and jam on the brakes, make a violent steering input greater than required to counter a sway or swerve from the tire failure, or a combination of both.  Sometimes, they will do so, not out of panic, but because they think if they can get stopped on the shoulder quick enough, they can save the tire.  News Flash:  Any tire that goes flat at freeway speed is destroyed, and any tire driven on flat for more than a few hundred feet should be considered unsafe for repair and reuse due to sidewall damage.  I have investigated a number of FATAL accidents caused by loss of control following tire failure where the tire that failed was a recently repaired flat that should not have been placed back in service.

As for replacing both rear tires with Michelins and leaving the Firestones on the front, probably not a good idea.  We had a change in tire vendors, leaving us with a mix of Firestone and BF Goodrich tires for the Mustangs, Diplomats and Caprices.  There wasn't much of a problem with the Caprices, but when you had Firestones on the front and Goodriches on the rear of the Mustangs and Dips, previously good handling vehicles developed severe oversteer; The back end tended to break loose very easily.  Switch the Goodriches to the front and it became severe understeer.  Three crashes and one totalled Mustang later, mixing tires became a no-no.

I discussed that issue with a tire engineer from Dunlop at a tire forensics class.  He said mixing tires by the average car owner or tire dealer was a foolish thing to do since neither has the equipment or testing facilities adequate to proove the safety of such things.

I agree with slugbait and Dave G.  In the last few years I have rented many Ford Explorers.  I have driven them through the west Texas desert loaded to the gills with circuit packs and luggage as hard as they can be pushed.  I have pushed them through mountain passes and long desert straights just as fast as that little V6 would push them and have found them not to be unstable at all.  As long as I made sure the inflation levels were proper, which I always did, I had no problem.

The problem is that people buy an SUV then whine that it rides like a truck.  Well, guess what people, it is a TRUCK.  These weenies are then advised to lower the pressure for a softer ride and like good little sheeple, they don't think about the facts and do as they are told, you know, like most Americans listen to the anti's without finding out the facts.  You now have a blowout waiting to happen.  From what I have seen, most of the deaths occurred when they were ejected because, gasp[:O], they weren't wearing their seat belt.

Yup, yup...What Larry said.

Go here for an outstanding read on the whole Firestone/Ford mess. The milage on some of the failed tires will astound you. Ed Wallace does an automotive talk show in Dallas on Saturdays and he is quite entereaining and informative. Lots of numbers and stuff here but worth it.

[url]http://insideautomotive.aperian.com/nhtsa/nhtsa-intro.htm[/url]

I agree with much of what's written here. I find it hard to believe that even though not every single tire in the supposedly "bad" lot went on Explorers and Expeditions, those were the only vehicles to be involved in fatal wrecks. If it was really the tires, you'd hear about plenty of other vehicles suffering from blowouts. IMO the blame for Firestone tire failures should be placed 5% on Ford for advising lower inflation pressures, and 95% on the driver for not knowing how to retain control of the vehicle. I see it [b]every[/b] winter up here, people who've lived here all their lives not having a [b]clue[/b] as to how to drive on different textures and "wetnesses" of snow, how to recover from a slide or skid on snow, ice, black ice, etc. Stupidity and ignorance are rampant!

I'm leaning towards 100% on the driver, because if you do something stupid it's your fault when you get hurt, regardless of who told you to do it in the first place.

I also own a 2000 Ford Focus, the tires suck, the have no bite on wet roads and are almost as good as greasy bacon in the snow.  Do what I am doing,buy a decent set of tires and get on with your life.