Quote:
Originally Posted by M3 Mitch
That's an unusual story Sunsprit, you had just one tire of a set of 4 wear out while the other 3 didn't? I would guess the tire was defective from the get-go, maybe it didn't get cured right.
One of the downsides of AWD is that you really need 4 tires that are the same size for it to work anything like right.
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The failed tire was a Bridgestone Insignia series, worn uniformly across the entire tread face. Apparently discontinued shortly after I bought the set of 4. the tires were rotated every 6,000 miles and had no unusual wear patterns that might be traced to an alignment problem (and the car tracks straight) on the front or rear.
The tire shop when I brought the car back to show them the one worn out tire immediately tried to sell me a new set of 4 tires, with the one tire warrantied for the short life and advising me that they could no longer get that tire (so they wanted a full set of matched tires). At my insistence, they mounted the same size Firestone to replace the Bridgestone and measured the rolling diameter to be within the Subie specs to match the other 3 tires. Other than the sidewall lettering/graphics, the Firestone looks almost identical to the Bridgestone tire; you'd think it was from the same tread mold. But the Firestone, as noted, appears to be a totally different tire in it's internal construction ... so much better.
Not having been a Firestone fan, I wouldn't have bought their tires. But my wife had previously gone with her car to our best local independent tire store, not knowing that she'd be buying a full set of tires that day and the Michelin prices there were simply out of her budget. The Firestones were much less expensive, and so far ... I'd have to say if they approach the Michelin tire longevity, I'm happy with them. They're noticeably less fatiguing to drive than the Bridgestones, cruising the 75 mph distances we have around this region on cruise control.
I did have a similar single tire failure in a set many years ago (IIRC, circa 1975) on my 1972 BMW 2002, Michelin XAS 165SR13. The first set gave me excellent mileage, the next set was a miserable excuse for a top dollar tire. Michelin was apparently playing games with the rubber compounds and the tire production varied greatly from one batch to the next. For such an expensive tire at the time, they were a huge disappointment, although the dealer did replace my one worn-out tire on a pro-rata mileage guarantee.
Subie is pretty particular about matching the rolling diameter on the manual transmission cars, and we've been caught out twice before where my wife destroyed one tire in a set so we had to replace all 4 (with one replaced under the road hazard warranty). Most of those surviving 50% worn tires make it to our farm utility trailers/equipment, such as the hay rakes or ditcher or spring tooth harrow ... so they're not a total loss, and less expensive than dedicated farm implement tires.