Hi,
Sorry to hear about the demise of your tire, hopefully the rim is still okay
and you didn't damage the body etc. (Hint: double check to make sure your
brake lines are not touched.)
At a seminar at VTR '94 in Ashville, NC (Hi Jamie), there was a dude from
Michelin talking about tire technology etc. What the fellow said was pretty
interesting...
First off, what you probably experienced was the failure of the steel belts
in the tire. I have seen this a bunch of times, I had a set of Pirelli
Cinturatos that did it, although mine just went way out of round, and my
advanced senses detected that "something was shaking the #&!! out of my
TR6!" Seeing that I had just taken the tires off the wheels, sandblasted and
all that, my initial reaction was that I had tossed a weight from the rim.
So I took 'em back to the garage that mounted and balanced the tires for a
rebalance. Only after prodding did the guy check the runout on the tire.
Yep, about .25 inches out at one point on the tire.
No harm, no foul. I bought 4 Michelin XGT4's to replace them.
Now, one of the folks in the audience asked the question: would you
recommend Michelin X Red lines as replacement tires. Short answer - NO. This
was '94, so things may have changed, but the fellow went on to explain that
Michelin actually did not make those tires anymore, they were licensed to
another company some time ago.
But, what the guy was trying to say (irrespective of "correctness" and "tire
look") was that newer tires are just better. Okay, that's the easy part.
He also said that when the Redlines were made, the manner that they put the
tires together was such that over time the belts would probably fail. This
is not a statement about Michelin or Redlines, but it's a statement about
_old tires_. They are just that - _old tires_.
Now, if I were interested in a set of Redlines to make my car look good, I
would not drive _any distance_ on them. I'd put 'em on the luggage rack and
passenger seat and drive to the event and then install them just before
driving on the show field.
Wait - I already do that! Except I carry around race tires and put 'em on
for Autocrossing. Hmmmm.
Oh well, I'm not criticizing anyone - I just want to point out that tires
are an important safety item and you should be careful about mixing old
tires and sports cars...
Have a nice day!
rml
TR6's
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