During a warm day (110 degree weather) of spirited driving, novice at SOW in my stock S2K, I had my rear tires (Bridgestone Potenza Pole Position S-04) with no more than 7K miles begin to decompose. Pieces of tread are actually missing now from the tread pattern. I took the tires into my local Firestone/Bridgestone dealer who referred me to the Bridgestone/Firestone warrantee hotline where I spoke to a representative and then a manager for Bridgestone's warrantee department who essentially told me to kick rocks and they wouldn't warrantee or pro-rate my tires. According to him the S2k is a high powered car and I over heated the tires... So...

...My dilemma is, I am pretty disappointed with the customer services mainly by the warrantee manager and am considering alternatives to the Bridgestones but still have a practically new set of the Pole Positions on my front wheels. So I could just buy a new set of rear S04s or jump ship and take my business elsewhere with a new set of four to avoid running two different tread patterns...

Thoughts guys?

 

how long were your lapping sessions?

do you know your tire pressures and alignment specs?

 

No more then 10-20 min sessions. I set them to 32lbs. I had all four wheels aligned at installation. Ill look for and post those measurements when I get home.

 

Thats crazy looking! Never seen this myself. Looks like someone took a hot razor knife to them.

 

Wow, I can't believe that. I guess I know what tire not to buy. Get yourself some star specs, I just did 10, 20 minute runs at Pocono over 2 days and the tires look the same as they did when I left my house

 

I had the S-04 on my car when I got it, and I had them start to chunk a little bit with just spirited street driving. Not nearly as badly as your's though. That looks like the tires were pretty dramatically overheated but still surprised to see them do that. This only happened on the rear tires? Also, how old were those tires? How long ago were they installed?

If you are going to be going back to the track I honestly wouldn't recommend the S-04. Having used the S-04 and the RE-11 consistently in the same setting the difference between the two is massive, even more so with the RE-11A.

I would definitely try to push Bridgestone again to see if they would cover a replacement of the two rear tires. Dig around and see if they have a customer care line or something like that maybe. So you could at least use the the front tires appropriately.

I have also seen the Michelin Pilot Super Sport do this exact same thing. The moment they start to get really hot they just get eaten alive.

 

You aren't going fast enough

 

That's not the kind of thing that happens under the kind of conditions the tire is made for.

That being said, I don't know what SOW is, but I'm guessing Streets of Willow? Or some other kind of track?

Next question is where did you purchase the tires from? Did you get in touch with the place you purchased them from about this or was that the dealer you talked about that you visited? (Not that an official Firestone/Bridgestone dealer shouldn't be able to help you, but if you purchased them from one place and then go somewhere else then they might not feel as inclined/obligated to help you) I.e. if you got them from tirerack.com, get with them on the issue. (They're especially good about helping with issued like that.)

Tell me more about where you purchased them from and how hard you were pushing the car. (Based on what I'm seeing on the tires, the alignment specs won't matter one way or the other.)

 

Yeah, Ive never seen this happen before. Sort of upset since I paid about $200 a tire. I was pushing a bit and expected they'd hold up. I never thought they would break apart like this.

The front tires do look a bit cooked but tread looks okay and they arent bad like the rears. The rear tires have a manufacture date of 2010 and fronts a date of 2012. I had them all installed by a tire shop almost extactly a year ago,. about 6-7k miles ago.

Okay, I'll definitely keep pushing Bridgestone. You recommend contacting customer service rather than the warrantee hotline?

How do the RE-11 and RE-11A hold up on the street? How do you like the tread life? I do track events about four times a year. Hopefully soon, I would like to have a wheel/tire set designated for the track. But until then, Ill have to balance street and track functionality. Also I rarely commute long distances in the S2K. I thought I did enough research on the S-04s before I bought them. I guess not. :-/
A friend has recommended the PSS. But you say they fail too in a similar manner? :-/

 

I am not exactly sure who to contact as I haven't tried myself. But with enough digging around i would guess you can find.

Yeah I had no issues with my front S-04s either hmm. The fronts should really have more heat in them than the rears shouldn't they with the amount of heat that gets put into the tire under braking? I wonder if there was a bad batch of 255/40/17 S-04s that got out there? Or did you have 245? The RE-11A is the best multi-purpose tire you can buy at the moment in my opinion. It does everything extremely well, and it maintains grip until you get to the cords. The S-04 is by no means a bad tire, it just wasn't designed to be pushed like some of the higher end street tires were. Tires are sort of like brake pads in that way. There are plenty of brake pads that will still slow you down when they get up to higher temps, but they will disintegrate very quickly at those temps, where track pads can take the heat much better. I definitely couldn't recommend the Michelin PSS. A friend of mine destroyed a set of PSS in around 2000 miles. Tread blocks completely destroyed down to the cords mainly along the shoulder of the tire. He changed nothing about the alignment or suspension setup and has had no issues with many other brands and models of tire. I would guess that that PSS sidewall is pretty soft compared to other tires (the S-04 is probably similar) so it just exaggerates the problem.

Really for the track the standard choices are Dunlop ZII, Bridgestone RE-11A, Hankook RS-3, Yokohama AD08/AD08R. All that said though, it is very odd for a tire from Bridgestone to start to come apart like that.