To those of you who are relying on external appearance of the rubber to determine status of a tire....
The external condition of the rubber doesn't tell you anything about the condition of the core of the tire. In my case, it was belt separation that cause the problem. You can't see that until it fails.
Looking at my tires before they failed, they looked fine. To use Mrennie's words, could have said, "They look mint, have not a crack, mark, or check on them and no way I would throw them away without a visual indicator of a problem.", yet driving home from a car show I ended up with a knot the size of my fist in the tread surface with steel cords sticking out through the tread. The other three tires still looked perfect, I had an unused matching spare that I put on.
After the failure of tire #1 of that set, maybe I had a heightened sensitivity to vibrations. Within 500 miles I felt a vibration again. Still couldn't see anything wrong with any of the tires, but when I put another set of tire on the vibration went away.
I only discovered the beginning of a belt separation on those other three tires when I was rolling them in the shop and they twerked at the same spot. Upon very close inspection focused on about 3" of the tread - I found the slightest bump on the tread surface on all three remaining tires. They were a time bomb that I was lucky enough to defuse (by taking them off the car) before a major failure on the highway at speed.
We have discussions on this board all the time about having the right insurance to protect our toys, what modifications to make to improve them to make them accelerate faster, brake better, handle better, get better gas mileage or even look better. Examples - overdrive transmissions, fuel injection systems, stronger rear ends, sway bars, different springs, roller camshafts, custom wheels...
All those things cost money. In many cases, LOT's of money.
And here we have numerous people that don't want to budget $100 per year or so for tires for their pride and joy.
I just don't get it.
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