Ferrari Mailing List: Re: More money than brains!

[Charles Perry (charles]

Excellent points. In fact, I have a funny (now) story about Dennis'
advice regarding the other rear tire. When I first bought my 355, I
picked it up in Chicago and drove it home to SC. The tires looked fine
in Chicago.

My first day with the car back in SC, I was driving it around town and
went around a well known 90-degree curve in spirited fashion.
Unexpectedly, the car went spinning across three lanes and thankfully
hit nothing, much to the amusement of the Mustang GT driver behind me
who successfully navigated the same turn at the same speed. I was
irritated that my new Ferrari didn't handle as well as a Mustang GT, but
chalked it up to my inexperience with the car. On the way home, I came
around a similarly well known 75 degree curve in spirited fashion, and
again went unexpectedly pirouetting across three lanes. Having
successfully done that curve at much higher speeds in the TR, the
Corvette, my dad's 3000GT-VR4 and my mom's Stealth, I thought something
might be amiss with the 355.

On arrival home and re-checking the tires, both the inside edges of the
rear tires were well into showing the metal belts. The tire had just
enough rubber to cover the belts when I picked up the car, and I guess
the ride home from Chicago took the rest of that off. As Dennis' said,
you would never have seen that from looking at the side of the tire as
the outer edge had plenty of tread depth left. Again, I was quite lucky
as part of our route home from Chicago included the entire Blue Ridge
Parkway, where each stunningly beautiful precipice would've been happy
to write off an idiot in a new Ferrari if I'd been on belts just a hair
sooner.

Check your rubber! I'm thinking Clyde thinks I'm trying to cleanse
myself from the gene pool at this point... :-)

-- charles




-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Liu [mailto:bigheaddennis [at] gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 10:15 AM
To: Charles Perry
Cc: cmidgett [at] inkonit.com; 'The FerrariList'
Subject: RE: [Ferrari] More money than brains!

Charles, thanks for the advice.  And in your case, your advice may prove
to be more brains than money, contrary to the subject line.

But allow another possibility or two.  You could have had a puncture in
the tire or a cut in the sidewall that caused a quick or sudden loss of
pressure.  Even at relatively slow speeds, if the tire loses all air,
even a couple of hundred feet may be enough to destroy the sidewall.  So
it may not necessarily have been the age of the tire.  Currently, tire
manufacturers are now starting to adopt age limits on usage, but it's a
matter of some hot debate (much like how long a timing belt will last;
Charles Perry may be the outlier indicator for both!).  I've also seen
people hit curbing hard enough to pop the bead on the tire, causing a
loss of air pressure and subsequent destruction of the tire.  

Have you taken a look at the other rear tire?  Often times, due to the
negative camber designed into these cars, and the additional wear caused
by the mid-engined design and heavy acceleration, the inside edge of the
tire will wear out much, much more quickly than the outside.  So unless
you get under the car and look closely, the tire may look fine on the
outside edge with plenty of tread, but could actually be read to
catastrophically fail.

Bottom line, I've witnessed and experienced enough tire failures, both
on the street and at the track, where the catastrophic loss of air
pressure caused near-instant deflation.  Any continued driving results
in the shredding of the sidewall, which may lead one to conclude that it
was sidewall failure when the cause was something else.

Vty,

--Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Perry [mailto:charles [at] carolina-sound.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 10:05 AM
To: Dennis Liu
Cc: cmidgett [at] inkonit.com; The FerrariList
Subject: Re: [Ferrari] More money than brains!

Speaking of which, I have another piece of advice for the List since I
seem to be becoming the resident poster child for learning things the
hard way even though I know better.

Yesterday in taking some friends out for rides, I suffered a
catastrophic rear tire failure in the Diablo. There was a loud bang, and
when we pulled over, the sidewall had almost entirely perforated. We
were EXTREMELY lucky.
If it had happened 90 seconds earlier it could easily have caused an
accident that totalled the car and severely injured us. As it was, it
happened at low speed on a straight stretch and did no damage to the car
at all. 

We had checked the tire pressure before leaving the house (as I almost
always do), so the only things I can think of that would've caused such
a severe failure is age of the rubber (I believe these were the original
tires, making them 8 years old, albeit with under 10k miles on them), or
that a previous owner operated the car with low tire pressue and
weakened the sidewall before I ever got the car.

Either way, please remember to replace your tires at the recommended
time intervals and consider replacing them on any used car you buy as
you never know what the previous owner did. In my case, a set of tires
will run about $1500, but that is small insurance to protect your life
and a six-figure car.

-- charles


-------------------------------------------------------------------
                         Charles G. Perry IV
 
Carolina Sound Communications           (843) 571-4488
1941 Savage Rd., Suite 200G             (843) 571-4492 fax
Charleston, SC 29407                    www.carolina-sound.com
 
"The problem with doing things right the first time is that no
               one realizes how difficult it was."
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