Glad to hear you made it home safe!


ByteTheBullet  (-:

No man in his right mind would do 70 mph in a YUGO!!!!  (congrats on the GD mod promo The_Beer_slayer!!)  [beer]

I had two of the fat baby in the tire brand separate on my truck. One came off and wrapped around the axle and broke my brake line. When I checked the others another one had just started too come apart also. I always thought it had been caused by the aftermarket rims I had put on the truck untill I saw the stuff on tv a while back.

What model/size of Firestone? On what kind of vehicle?

Just curious. I'm still running the original Firestone Steeltex radials on my Ford F-250 Super Duty. Have had zero problems in 27,000 miles, and still have plenty of tread life left (assuming the tires don't disintegrate first).

I ran several sets of pursuit rated Firestones on my patrol car, & they gave great tread life and good cornering. Had no problems with them either. Although, after hearing about all the problems with the Explorers a couple of years ago, it did make high speed runs a little more white-knuckle than usual......

yah, Ford bought me new BFG TA/kos for my Ranger adt the end of their Firestone recall... those things always were junk!

I remember those days, but I think they were the Firestone 500s. I think their technology has some problems. I think the big problem with steel-belted radial ply tires is getting the rubber to bond to the steel. Michelin of FRANCE pretty much pioneer that the radial ply tire and the techniques to bond rubber and steel together.

Was doing 75mph  down I-95 a couple of years ago when my ranger experienced a tread seperation on the right rear.  Almost lost control.  The tire was a couple of months off from the recall batch.  Go figure....

It had been proven the tread seperation did NOT cause the roll overs...Nasser was just trying to save his job at the expense of Firestone.  Nor were the tires "defective" in any of the plausible modes of failure.  The blame lies squarely on the recommended UNDERINFLATION Ford Motor Company has published as a means of REDUCING the overcorrection-induced rollovers that testing had shown to be a problem in these vehicles.

There are many more non-tire related roll-overs with this vehicle...going to blame the tires there???  FYI, I have had catastrophic blow-outs including complete tread separation and never had I a control problem.  It might have been difficult to steer, rough or uncomfortable but NEVER did I lose attitude of the vehicle.  

He beat me to it, but 28psi sucks in those tires. It caused shitty handling at higher speeds and most people can't drive anyway. One of them thangs really. Just too bad people got hurt in the process. I had replaced the Firestone Wilderness AT's on my truck right (as in week or so) before the story/recall broke.

A lot of it also was because people bought Explorers and then whined that it 'rides like a TRUCK'.  Duh, it is a truck.  They lowered the inflation to get a softer ride.

Firestone is the biggest POS company there is and they make a POS product.  I have had them on several vehicles and taken them off of every one.   I bought a new Toyota truck about 18 months ago and it had Tombstone tires on it.  They started to just come apart and I took them to a Tombstone dealer.  The lying  SOB told me that the problem was with my factory wheels.  I went to Toyota and they confirmed that the tires were faulty and that they were under Tombstone warranty and said that they would contact Tombstone for me.  Nothing, they just blew off Toyota.  The Toyota dealer apologized for selling me a truck with their tires on it and gave me a new set of tires that run great.

I had a '73 Chevy Nova that had the old Firestone 500 tires.  When I was moving from Orlando, FL to Seattle, WA after graduating, one of the belts seperated about 50 miles east of Little Rock, ARK.  I replaced it with a cheap used tire and went on.  The other F-500 separated about 50 miles west of Little Rock.

I replaced both used tires in San Antonio from Sears.  I never bought Firestone since and never will.

Merlin

Whoa on the Firestone bashing!  This quasi-statistical railheading is doing nothing but anger venting.  If even ONE of the bashers here ever set foot in a tire plant, they would realize just how foolish it is to bash one company based on one line...its like saying the McRibwich is a POS therefore all McDonalds is crap...

Does anyone here know exactly how much testing Firestone puts into its tires?  Like the test track in Ft. Stockton, West Texas...damn, its the biggest thing in Ft. Stockton besides the oil patch.  Shoot, its even bigger than that since the Permian Basin started drying up.  Trust me, there is not ONE BIT OF EVIDENCE indicating this was a design problem.  It was a management problem  covering shoddy suspension design on the Exploder.  Why is it the IRS model was pushed into the system after the untimely divorce of Ford and Firestone?  And Jacques Nasser was summarily replaced by a REAL MAN (Bill Ford)?

Trust me, the Wilderness AT's were a superior tire placed on an INFERIOR suspension by a management bent on the bottom dollar and not the root cause.

bridgestone tires are fu**ing awesome...

anone who has ever rode on a pair of the new potenza pole position s-03's knows what im talking about...

a far better tire than the s-02 and that is saying a lot...

It never ceases to amaze me that those who complain most about "faulty" tires are the same ones who don't maintain them (regular rotations, wheel alignment) and drive around with 18 pounds of air pressure in them. And then they want to sue somebody when they come apart. These are the same people who sue McDonalds when they spill hot coffee in their lap.

A woman (who also happened to be a lawyer) came into my shop one day with a 2001 Chevy full size pickup. She had 36k miles on her truck. By her own admission, she had never rotated the tires and never had a wheel alignment. The tires had 3/4 of their tread left, but the front tires were severely cupped, which of course caused a vibration. When I explained to her the importance of rotating her tires on a regular basis, she said "don't give me that shit; rotating tires is unneccessary. You people just tell us that crap to make money." When I offered to rotate her tires and check her alignment for no charge, she got even more pissed off.

Beer_Slayer, your truck is pretty old. How old are your tires? If they are more than 4 years old, then they are past their service life anyway.

With enough neglect, any tire will fail. Not every vehicle turns over from a failed tire, though.

Panzer Out

Firestone and all most major tire mfgrs also make tires for the private label brands such as Sear's Roadhandler. Of course they make it to the buyer's specifications.

I spoke with out Goodyear rep about the Firestone/Explorer problem and he too feels it was an inflation problem.  I do blame Firestone for not walking away when Ford specd too low a pressure, so in that sense they are ultimately responsible.
Believe me, tire companies do their homework.
It is a very competitive business and most fleet operators count tires as second only to fuel in their running rates.