Road hazard and tyre warranty - my story

[Magicman]

This is a first for me.

Not only did you manage to use "Good" and "Dunlop" together, but you also added "offroad"


You my friend, are a linguistic genius!

Thank you - obviously need my next holiday.

[Magicman]

Maybe something hit and damaged the tyre you did not take note of or noticed..

TO ME... the secondary pattern next to the "main fracture" certainly hints that something hit the tyre.

Someone suggested a cats eye - perhaps?

[Magicman]

I would hate to be a tire manufacturer. Especially in SA.

With our roads being so bad, how can they conclusively tell if the damage was caused by a manufacturing defect or from the roads?

Do they go back to the factory, pull some batch number off the tire and compare it to the inspection data for that batch? Or do they just look at it and say, "yeah, tire looks ok in other areas and therefore must be some external factor?"

Absolutely agree with you, I think it comes down to communication and in my case, I wanted to know what might have happend. The tyre is replaced as under insurance. As per my added comment, Dunlop have made contact and will check the tyre - purely because the damage was so extensive.

[Damdan]

That is not a clean cut/burst.
Something pushed into the casing.

[Rofftoss]

Based on my personal experience with Dunlop AT3's and Dunlop's response to my complaint... Dunlops are crap tyres and I won't even fit them to my lawnmower. It is all big talk when the dealer is selling you the Dunlops but when it comes to living up to those sales pitches, Dunlop backs down and rejects everything.

Dunlop told me that the AT3's are tar and gravel travelling...

[daveysmith]

I had a very similar bow out with a maxtrek ht tyre on the highway at 120km/h - damage is almost the same.

Back left wheel - did not hit anything. What looked like an impact on the sidewall, I can only imagine was from driving it flat and negotiating getting it off the highway and the.

Crazy how similar the damage was to your tyre!

GV blow out on high way (4x4community.co.za)

[Pieter de Waal]

I had much the some type of "cut" on a KO2, a bit shorter but 2 plies deep. I only discovered this when rotating wheels, so I could have been traveling with this for who knows how many kms. I have never seen this kind of lateral damage on a tyre, due to a manufacturing defect (I don't think the manufacturing process lend itself to this), but I have seen, and not seen, many objects of all shapes and sizes on the road surface that will cause the kind of cut my wheel had. One example - we had a mini circle in our suburb that had a flatbar ring as an edge, the ring came loose and the welding broke, so that the edge of the flatbar was pointing upwards and outwards, ready to cut any tyre. It was like that for months (no manner of reporting had any effect) so I always wondered how many tyres were damaged, without the driver even knowing about it.

I totally agree with this. The damage does not correspond to how a tyre flaw would fail in my mind. The secondary damage also suggests outside interference.(I am not a tyre guy. These comments are from a very practical and technical point of view only.) I have had my share of tyre failures and seen some other guys failures as well. I have yet to see one that I would outright say that it was a manufacturing flaw. The known brand tyres are actually very robust and well designed. The bad roads we drive is torture for a tyre.

Thank your tyre dealer for excellent service.