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Should this concern me? (Tire question)
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Roger65
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Joined: April 26, 2013
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Location: PNW
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 05, 2013 10:47 pm    Post subject: Should this concern me? (Tire question) Reply with quote

Washed my car today and noticed this:

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Only shows when tire is wet or shiny. Car is a Syncro tintop, right front tire.
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Wildthings
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 1:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That is common. It is where the ends of the piles lie. Assuming they have always been there there is no reason to worry. If they are changing then you have a problem.
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mr. c
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 6:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have a similar concern whenever I rotate my tires and my spare is put into action. It always has depressions from the tire carrier (undercarriage...I run 14's).

Thankfully, they always go away.
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Roger65
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 7:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for putting my mind at ease. They have always been there, I looked at older photos, I just never noticed it before
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nwester
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 7:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not sure you should ignore those dimples, just in case... I found the following post when I was searching for tire options a couple of weeks ago:

funagon wrote:
I bought my current van with a set of Nokian Hakka 205/70/14 tires on it. Those were the best handling tires I've ever had on a vanagon. Very stable and assured when cornering. Those nokians exceeded the load rating for vanagons. They were wide with a very squared off profile like this:

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When I replaced them I cheaped out and bought the General Altimax RT 205/70R14 tires. They have a more rounded profile, and despite being advertised as size 205/70/14, I could see that they were not as wide as my Nokians. They also did not handle very well through corners. I had to seriously reduce my speed because I got that sort of wallowing "marshmallow" feel while driving through corners or in sidewinds. After a few thousand miles two of the General Altimax RT tires developed strange indentations in the sidewalls that hinted at something structural changing beneath the surface of the tire. Looked like this:

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


I told myself, "Self, you'd better put some different tires on that van before you have a blowout." But before I got around to it my rear tire blew out while driving on the highway. (Blewout on the inside of the tire--facing the transmission--not the outside where the depressions appeared.) I can't say for sure what caused the blowout. I was on a highway with no shoulder, and since I had to drive on the damaged tire (at low speed!) to get off the highway I don't know how much of the damage was caused by the initial blowout, and how much was caused by driving on it. Here's how it looked:

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


So I bought another set of Nokians from Van-Cafe. I bought whatever they had in stock, which was the 185R14 hakka snow tire, designed for vans, load rating 102, good snow tire. Tread looks like this:

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


So here's my subjective evaluation, based on a sample size of 1. (That's me, I'm the single test in this experiment.):

Nokian 185R14's are good tires, handle relatively well. Not as good as the 205's did but road handling is acceptable, and appreciably better then the General Altimax. The Nokians give me peace of mind knowing that they can handle the weight of the van, can handle snow and mud, not showing any wierd deformations in the rubber.

Nokian 205/70/14's were excellent handling, very stable tires, far preferable to other 14 inch choices. The nokian website does not show them for sale anymore and I don't know if you can get them anymore.

General Altimax RT 204/70R14 were inexpensive, and that's the only good thing I can say about them. I was not satisfied with the driving characteristics nor the longevity of these General tires.

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denwood
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 5:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The belt join/rubber molding dips are cosmetic and have zero to do with tire safety . Just google the topic and read what tire manufacturers have to say. If you've taken a side impact , followed by distortion..another story.
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Wildthings
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 6:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nwester wrote:
Not sure you should ignore those dimples, just in case... I found the following post when I was searching for tire options a couple of weeks ago:

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.



If you look the dip is between the "N" and "E" in the work "General" while the failure was elsewhere in the tire. Don't know if General has fixed this problem with their 205/70R14 Altirmax tires or not, hopefully they have.
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