Stock tire sidewall failure?

Had 2015 Subaru Outback, bought new in '15. OEM tires were Bridgestones, without a mileage warranty (like the Toyo's on my '17 TRD Sport). By 23K miles, the tires were all but shot. Spoke with the dealership, who advised me of the lack of warranty. However, they called the Bridgestone rep, who agreed to give me 25% off a new set of Bridgestones. While I wasn't real happy about going with Bridgestones, I had run some decent tires from the them previously. Did my research and found a tire model that offered all that I needed, along with excellent customer reviews. Went ahead and replaced the OEM's with a new set of Bridgestones. It was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. This was an easy solution for me, as I was planning to get rid of the Subaru to get back into a Tacoma anyway.

My point: Maybe Bridgestone / Firestone, same ownership, would make you an offer on a new set, Bridgestones if you can't abide Firestones.

 

Based on the circumstances of the failure, I decided keeping the stock tires wasn't worth it and bought a new set from Discount Tire.

A friend of mine was pushing me towards General Grabber AT2s, but the BFG KO2s were just barely more ($10 per tire after rebates), so I got a new set of KO2s for $736 installed (including tax). I went with 235/85/16.

The ride on the KO2s is much quieter than the stock tires, which was an unexpected bonus. Here's the new tires:





As for the cause of failure, I'm still unsure. It seems like a defect is really unlikely, but I feel like a weird sidewall-only impact at speed that made no noise and somehow didn't hit the front tire seems equally probable. I asked the tire shop their opinion -- the extremely polite but possibly not too bright guy at the tire shop's professional opinion was "Welp, somethin happened to em! Betcha can't bust them KO2s though." Good enough for me.

 

Well all right then! Guess that’s that!

 

Well we had to spend some money. But, this thread ended well!

Congrats.

 

Looks exactly like the failure I had after hitting a piece of steel in the road near a construction site. I knew it tho as it made a sound and threw the object ~30ft up in the air and behind me. I laughed as it sailed overhead and saw it in my side mirror bouncing on the road. Then it dawned on me what happened and the dreaded flap, flap, flap ensued.

 

235/85/16s? Neat...
What psi?

 

I still need to do the chalk test. They're at 35psi now.

 

Start at 43 psi....

 

Will do! Thanks.

 

One could put another small car between the top of the suspension and the lower part of the white truck's body!

 

Interesting, we have about 32K (still good) on our original Bridgestones on our 15 Outback --of course my wife is a very gentle driver!

 

Same thing happened to me with the same brand and model of tire on the rear driver tire kinda frustrated because i know I didn’t run over anything and the tires were well inflated with less than 5000 miles on them

 

How far did you drive on that tire and rim after failure?

 

1/4 mile

 

Did quite a bit of damage to the rim. On the bright side, it didn’t cause a wreck.

 

That was just some rubber that smeared on the rims cleaned up easily

 

I'm still riding on the same Michelin LTX MS2 tires I bought in '09 or '10. 80k miles on them easily. Still have tread, still decent in the rain. Excellent tire.

I could not believe the stock tire on the Sport was a POS Firestone. Honestly it was one of the factors that pushed me toward the Limited as they come standard with Michelin Defenders. Might as well start off off with good tire that you will probably only replace once.

 

that looks like a rip, not a slice like someone took a knife to it, pretty unusual looking maybe contact FIRESTONE to see if they had a bad batch of tires

 

This happened while i was on the highway for more than 45 min i got rid of the tire since I changed all four tires to a different brand