Alignment finally done, but ?
I started my career in the tire and service industry in he early 70's. The first company I worked for was a large independent. We carried all the major brands and a few smaller ones. Radial tires were just being introduced on a large scale to the US market. Out of all the tires we sold including Armstrong, BF Goodrich, Dunlop, Firestone, Goodyear, Kelly-Springfield, Michelin, Pirelli, Seiberling, Uni-royal and a few others, only Michelin tire did not have a major separation problem. They just had weak sidewalls and were not repairable after a flat because of inner liner damage to the sidewalls. Nobody had success during the early years of radial tire construction. Firestone got the most news attention but it was an industry wide problem. The second major news covered Firestone recall was not a tire manufacturing problem but a combination of overloaded tires due to the vehicle manufacturer ( Ford) recommending too low of an air pressure on a Firestone tire that Ford engineers spec'd to Firestone for OEM production.
These were OE on the Explorer and Ranger 4X4 pick-ups.
Fact is that the Ranger which was much lighter than the Explorer had a Ford recommended 35 Psi recommendation. Almost zero problems. The Explorer always carried a 26 PSI recommendation And as the Explorers weight increased through out the years of first generation Explorer's production, the pressure recommendation did not change and most people just don't check their tire pressure very often if at all.. There were several soft tire recalls going on at the same time but the Ford/Firestone story grabbed the news.
Goodyear actually had several recalls on different sizes of LT-truck tires going on at the same time, but didn't draw much attention.
Tire quality has increased so much in the last 40 years that the highest quality tires of the seventies don't match the performance of many of the economy tires of today. And the retail prices have not increased that much. A top quality tire of the seventies was in the $100. price range. Economy tires started at $15 !
Fact. Retired in 2010. I worked for the big tire companies in the 80, 90 and 2000's. well over 100,000 tires sold and serviced in that time period of all brands. Not stories vaguely remembered or heard second or third hand.
