I apologize in advance for the long explanation, but here goes;

I purchased two brand new Dunlop Direzza DZ101 245/40/18 this past April from Tirerack for my front 18x9 wheels. The tires had a manufacturing date of early 2013 so they're not an old batch. I had them installed on the 23rd and ran them since, nothing to complain about, good grip wet or dry, low-noise until they wore down unevenly.

Found out during mid-July that I was getting some pretty bad inside wear on the tires which is apparently from bad caster alignment due to some Energy Suspension polyurethane bushings I had installed in my compression rods which don't go well with dropped suspensions (Thanks JasonZ-YA for all the write-ups! My fault for missing out that bit about the E-S bushings being not recommended...)

My car is lowered on some Eibach Sportlines, has adjustable camber arms at all corners (Kinetix front, SPC rear) and the car sits within spec (except for caster obviously), just thought I'd specify I'm not running excessive camber or what not. I am looking into coil-overs sometime within the next few months, but that might be delayed now...

So I got the two tires switched sides in the front last Friday (one week ago) at a reputable shop in my area, to get the insides out on both sides (tires have a rotational pattern, no inside / outside), and I was quite happy to have caught it before they were too worn as I knew I could now at least finish the summer or even get into summer next year without a problem with the amount of thread left on them.

To correct the bad alignment, and so as to not wear down that side of them or future tires, I ordered some SPL Pro spherical bearings to replace the compression rod bushings. Got them quite quickly (3 days, thanks Amazon!), so I lifted the car this morning to tear it apart and press in the new bushings to get ready for an alignment this week and come to find out both front tires have this:








I've only put ~200 miles on the car since they were remounted. I don't recall hitting any potholes in the past week, haven't been above 90-ish mph, they have 35 psi in them, so match what they had beforehand etc.

I had noticed the guy having a hard time getting them off while I creeped around the garage, but nothing unusually insane from what I could tell. It did take him like 1-1/4 hour to swap two tires though... And I do see prying-like marks around everywhere they have cracked, and in other spots...


What in the **** have they done to my tires? You guys think that happened by itself and the tires were bad (but take note this side was the outside 1 week ago so I would've noticed...) or that I should march back in that place and scream at people until I get free tires for their shoddy work?

 

You should CALMLY go back to the tire store and ask the manager to look at your tires. Bring your receipt so they can figure out who worked on them. Ask them politely if there's any other reasonable explanation for the damage near the bead of both tires. If they're a TireRack certified installer, they'll likely figure out what to do.

 

Either the installer was too aggressive with the tire bead breaker, or their machine has a sharp edge on the bead breaker arm blade.

 

Thanks for the advice guys.

Yes, I'll go back on Monday, will calmly explain everything, but I just can't picture the shop owning up to it and replacing them, they always come up with some excuse to make it our fault, especially that I did not purchase these tires through them.

I'm still out of a vehicle until I get new ones :/

 

First indication something was wrong was when he took over an hour to do 2 tires.

 

hahaha 1 hour for 2 tires. WTF. The dude must be new.