Renzo404

This has happened to all of my previous 5 tires, all of them still had at least 2/3 of life left. Were they just poor quality tires? I know they were cheap low end, but wasn't expecting for all of them to fail like this.

imgur.com/a/nsyLHPC

79pmooney

I cannot see that image. A common source of sidewall failure is a brake pad that is just touching the sidewall when braking because it is too far up on the rim. Another it a tire too wide or rim not true enough (or improperly dished or not set properly in the dropouts). Or simply too big. Or contacting a fender.

Different tires are quite different in susceptibility to sidewall damage. Panaracer Paselas are very susceptible. Just easing up to a curb at a stoplight can do it. (To sidewalls that can go long distances and give excellent rides if not touched.)

There have also been tires that have times of being famous for unwarranted sidewall failures. And runs of otherwise good tires. And manufacturers having bad runs of the wrap of the cord around the bead and its gluing back to itself.

I look forward to seeing the photo. It will take you 10 posts over several frustrating days to get the permission to post pics. Stick around and be patient. Welcome to BF!

Renzo404

Thanks for your answer but they were not sidewall failures but tread failures, if you get a way to open the link you will see what I mean.

SoCaled 

pic assist:

79pmooney

OK, looks to me like casing damage from a hard impact. Stone maybe? Probably an impact that a quality tire would probably (but not always) brush off but that caused the threads of a layer of cord to break. (The cord on nearly all tires runs diagonally in both directions. Break one layer and the entire body of the tire skews diagonally. A partial slice from a sharp piece of metal can do the same thing, only from the other side and the warp-age would be a mirror image. Either way, you have roughly 1/2 the original strength.)

So, best to call this tire dead. It would probably get you that 100 miles home but it you are posting from home, start your next ride on a new one. I don't recognize your tire but a good one to consider in the mid price range is the Panasonic Pasela, available in a wide range of widths and in both 700c and 27". The Paselas don't like sidewall abrasion at all so mind my cautions of my first post but the cord is supple and strong and tolerates impacts very well.

SoCaled 

5 tires? All on the same rim? What brands and size tires have been failing? very curious

veganbikes

Low initial cost tires are that way for a reason. You are buying something to get you by until you can get a decent tire and made quickly and without much regard to quality. Decent tires are less likely to deform and have issues after impacts and normal riding on non-perfect surfaces.

There are tons of excellent tires out there with different characteristics. If you want more puncture protection look for Continental Gatorskins or GatorHardshells or Vittoria Rubino Pro or something in the Schwalbe Marathon line up. If you want a really nice ride, look at the Vittoria Corsa or Challenge/Veloflex open tubular tires (not a regular tubular tire those aren't compatible). If you maybe want some combination of the two or just something different, Continental GP5000 or Panasonic Panaracers or Challenge vulcanized tires.

RCMoeur 

Cord separation inside the tire wall. Older tires are more susceptible to this. My problem is that high-pressure 26" 559 tires are getting harder to find at a non-stratospheric price, so I'm trying to get as many miles as I can from used or salvaged ones. Alas, there is the possibility of the following:


It happens, I replace it, and just keep going...

Renzo404

That could make some sense as I hit a deep pothole at almost 30 km/h on the previous ride I took that last photo. The impact was so strong that made my saddle point down. But I didn't noticed any damage to the tires after I got home that day. Anyway, I just swapped the tire today.

First three tires were a Kenda branded K-31 700x20 tire. First tire failed after about 100 km of use and had the seller replace it. Could't get the others to last more than 1500 km if I remember correctly as they all had the same fate. Then I got it replaced with two generic Chinese branded tires (DSI I think). One of them burst while in a ride (I don't think I rode then for more than 500 km), the other just failed last week. After I swapped the Kenda tires I got hit a car and had to rebuild the wheels with another rims. And not only that, after I have to change tires, I have my inner tubes fail at the base of valve. Guess I'm really unlucky with tires and tubes haha.

Thanks for the recomendation but these tires are almost the price of my entire bike.
​​​​​​​

HelpSingularity 

At least the first two images show very inexpensive tires. IME they literally will fall apart, they will do exactly what you are experiencing. There is a reason why some tires are $10 and some are over 30-40 dollars. Stay away from the absolute cheapest tires you can find.
On the last image it looks like the tire is worn out, but it's hard to tell since the tire is out of focus.

Renzo404

Not really worn out, it was still pretty round. I will try to get better tires next time.

Chuck M 

I know on the surface that seems logical, but only if you are looking to flip a bike. To ride and enjoy your bike, good tires are important. On my bikes I ride for coffee on Saturday mornings, I don't go crazy on tires, but I will at the minimum get some Pasela tires. The bike I hit the roads on, I will get a better tire for.

And speaking of Pasela tires, I've had pretty good luck with them as far as bang for buck except for one and that was my fault. The Kenda tires I have on one of my bikes and on my wife's bike are not too swift. But those bikes just get used in the neighborhood when we ride with the grandkids.

dedhed

Where the proverbial rubber meets the road is not the place to skimp

cranky old road 

I'm wondering what sort of tire pressure the OP is using?

grumpus

How about Continental Ultra Sport III? I got some recently, they were only half the cost of the bike I put them on. Seems like a good entry level tyre, but I don't have many miles on them yet.

ridingfool

I have used some of those tires and can easily get over 3000 miles on them so if you add the cost and aggravation of going through 5 tires with about the same miles. In my opinion well worth the extra expense for a better tire.

Trakhak

Click and Clack, "the Tappet Brothers," had a long-running radio program called "Car Talk" where they advised callers on car repair woes. The issue of repair cost versus the value of the car came up fairly often. When it did, they would laugh at the arbitrary illogic of thinking that one should never repair a car if the repair was close to the value of the car.

From this page:

' On "Car Talk", Click and Clack used to talk about this. Say you're driving a $1000 car. You need new tires. Well, there's close to the value of the car just to get tires. But if you get the tires, you could drive another 50k miles - or the car could need a transmission in 1000 miles. But even if it did, it would be cheaper than buying a new car. '

Resisting buying high-quality bike tires for a cheap bike represents the same illogic. as spelled out in ridingfool's post above.

Look at it this way: if you buy two hundred dollars worth of new tires to improve the reliability of a two-hundred-dollar bike that you're otherwise happy with, your total investment is four hundred dollars, which is eighteen hundred dollars less than the investment of someone who bought the tires for a two-thousand-dollar bike.

choddo

Also five cheap tyres costs the same as one expensive one and you don’t get a mid-ride blowout on the latter. 4seasons or gatorskins last a looooong time.

I have a pair of the Conti Ultras mentioned above and they seem pretty decent for the price.

Duragrouch

Others have said my thoughts, "ply/belt separation", I've seen this on car tires after a hard pothole.

Quality bike tires are known to be constructed from fine-weave fabric casing, high number for Threads Per Inch (TPI), it's often specified, and they are known to ride more "supple", and with less rolling resistance. I don't know for certain, but my gut is saying that a more coarse weave, and especially instead of a weave, bias plies of much more coarse cord, in parallel direction, only bonded together in rubber, and then layered, and not a physical interlocking weave, is going to be inherently less strong to severe impacts that cause high stretch loads in the plane of the cords. They'll be decent strength in the direction of the fibers, but with parallel fibers, little strength 90 degrees to that, pulling the fibers apart, or shear loads wanting to slide the fibers with respect to each other. Just my guess.

Duragrouch

Many decades ago, Car & Driver magazine did a project car, their first turbocharged car, before this was common in production cars. They turboed an Opel 1900 sedan, and while they were at it, did some sporty suspension mods if I recall, and also fit it with BBS 2 or 3 piece wheels, and Pirelli P7 tires, the only steel-belted radial tire to be rated to 200 mph, and serious handling chops. The tires and wheels were worth more than the original used car, which they noted in the article.

Trakhak

Car & Driver had some terrific writers. I've always remembered a road test report for some Mopar muscle car in the 1970's that included the observation that the car "idled like a coffee can full of rocks," mentioned admiringly.

andrewclaus

Click and Clack had another saying I try to keep in mind, "The miserly man spends the most." That's very often true with tires--they're so important to the cycling experience, and safety. And some cyclists require reliablity, like commuters.

I feel the relative pain of tire cost pretty often. After refurbishing the 1983 Trek 520 I pulled out of a dumpster, with less than $100 in salvaged parts, I gladly put well over $100 into new tires. And a year later I wore those out and had to do it again. I use Gatorskins that have a list price of about $60 each. I can often find them on sale for under $40, so I try to keep one or two in stock. My wife uses the same tire so that helps. We used cheaper tires for years, and now agree that was a false economy.

Duragrouch

My favorite was Pat Bedard. Smart writer, good driver. However, not certain, I think it may have been him who said in a column in the '90s that electric cars make no sense because so much power is lost in transmission, and I believed it (again, not certain it was him), and that electric cars were then best for places like L.A., to reduce pollution that the mountains keep in place, so burn fuel elsewhere, use the clean electricity produced to power cars in L.A. But I learned that was all wrong. Electricity transmission is extremely efficient, over 90%, and is getting even better with High Voltage Direct Current (I thought AC was needed for efficient transmission, nope, it just was easy to jump power up and down in voltage with AC, but now they can do that with DC). Internal combustion engines are only 25% efficient, 75% is waste heat, F1 engines with thermal recovery approach 40-50% I think, but fossil fuels burned in power plants are over 90% efficient because they use all the heat. If we all went to electric cars, and that power came from coal, it would still be less carbon output than cars burning gasoline. And that says a lot. With wind turbine, solar, and much better nuclear, vastly less carbon emissions. Sorry the tangent.

Duragrouch

I used to buy great tires, kevlar casing, on drastic winter sale clearance from Nashbar, they didn't like rubber stuff sitting on the shelf.

cyccommute 

It’s not older tires but tires with low thread count per inch. All of the pictures shown so far clearly show large threads and few of them. A higher thread count tire is more resistant to cord separation and breakage than low thread count tires. Unfortunately many tires today are lower thread count tires. I’ve had trouble finding anything with a thread count higher than 67 tpi.