Yokohama dry rot after 2 years/20,000 miles!

This morning while inspecting some body damage on my daughter's Mustang, Rogue and I noticed some cracks in the sidewalls of the Yoko AS430's, the kind of cracks that one might expect to find on something that's been laying out in a field for ten or so years.

I went to NTB in Grapevine and let them take a look. They point out that the tires were mfg in June of 06. I point out that I bought them in July of 07. Makes me wonder where and what conditions they were stored for over a year...:confused:

They offered me a $61 credit per tire against the road hazard warranty, but naturally I'll still get to pay for mounting, balance, warranty again, etc...::BaHump:: what a deal for a so called 60,000 mile tire.

I don't know if I ought to pursue this with Yokohama as a tire defect, or with NTB. One thing for sure, they don't look safe and I figured they would have spotted it previously when doing rotation.

I had the dry rot porblem on the Potenza RE92A on my 06 Saab too. There were cracks in the middle of the tread area in 2 of the tires and the other two also showed minor cracks too. They were OE and I replaced them last summer. They only had 30K miles on them! They supposed to be good tires. They are expensive too, at $209 each at Tire Rack!

do you park the car outside all day at work? At night too?

Contact Yokohama, they have very good customer service and hate bad press they should take care of you.

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Originally Posted by miata_racer

do you park the car outside all day at work? At night too?

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Yes they are outside.So are the Continentals on my truck, some Falkens that are about the same age, a set of BF Goodrich, Kumhos and another set of Yokohamas with a lot more miles and years on all of these. Even the cheapo Dorals and LeMans I've got don't have this cracking.

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Originally Posted by CosmosMpower

Contact Yokohama, they have very good customer service and hate bad press they should take care of you.

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Looked up the warranty on their website and talked to Stephanie in customer service, who pointed out that "weather cracking" is excluded from warranty coverage and blamed the ozone, even though that same ozone has yet to affect my other tires. She even went so far as to shift blame to NTB, saying that Yokohama couldn't be responsible for tires that had been out of their control for over a year before being sold.

Had a fellow tell me that the government doesn't allow tire companies to use some ingredient in tire manufacture that used to prevent cracking, I don't know how reliable that anecdote is, but I've never seen tires look so old and deteriorated so quickly.

Eh...get some Fuzion ZRi's from tire rack. They will last 20k miles and are cheap and perform well :)

You know, I am not pleased with Yoko's either.
I had some a while back after reading some good reviews I got em and there was a short time they held the road good then it was slip and slide /push corners/ and very very hard material.

I never went back for more from that company.

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Originally Posted by Billy Blaze

You know, I am not pleased with Yoko's either.
I had some a while back after reading some good reviews I got em and there was a short time they held the road good then it was slip and slide /push corners/ and very very hard material.

I never went back for more from that company.

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Yeah, for the first 5K or so...now they won't hold if there is the slightest bit of water on a corner.

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Originally Posted by miata_racer

Eh...get some Fuzion ZRi's from tire rack. They will last 20k miles and are cheap and perform well :)

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You know, I had a set of those that came on the Bullitt wheels that I ran on the Thunderbird.
I was pretty pleased with them.
I drove that big old rocket in some crappy weather and they handled great.

FWIW I've had the a set of Yokohamas on my element for the last at least two or more years. Parked outside every day in all weather, and driven to / from Colorado up in the mountains in the winter, the hill country a few times, Corpus Christi/ Port A a few times, and Nebraska. I've abused the hell out of those tires and they're still going strong and handle pretty well. So I don't think it's the company as a whole, cause they do make good tires.

I have parked all of my cars outside all year, and drive the crap of them usually till they're bald, never seen cracks on any of them.

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Originally Posted by cam76034

Yes they are outside.So are the Continentals on my truck, some Falkens that are about the same age, a set of BF Goodrich, Kumhos and another set of Yokohamas with a lot more miles and years on all of these. Even the cheapo Dorals and LeMans I've got don't have this cracking.



Looked up the warranty on their website and talked to Stephanie in customer service, who pointed out that "weather cracking" is excluded from warranty coverage and blamed the ozone, even though that same ozone has yet to affect my other tires. She even went so far as to shift blame to NTB, saying that Yokohama couldn't be responsible for tires that had been out of their control for over a year before being sold.

Had a fellow tell me that the government doesn't allow tire companies to use some ingredient in tire manufacture that used to prevent cracking, I don't know how reliable that anecdote is, but I've never seen tires look so old and deteriorated so quickly.

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In that case I would have NTB bitch to their rep. Yokohama reps are scared to death of tire chains and customers threatening a BBB complaint etc.

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Originally Posted by BrandonP

I purchased the same tires approximately 1 1/2 year ago. They have 25,000 miles on them and they are almost worn out. The tires are noisy and have no grip on wet and dry surfaces! The worst spam I have ever owned.

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This is spam. Could a moderator remove this please?