Brian Cecil

I was driving along a curvy Southern California hillside road yesterday, when I suddenly heard a rythmic flapping sound coming from the right side of the car. I found part of the RF tire tread had separated from the tire, exposing metal reinforcement material underneath. I cut the loose tread away, and continued the ten miles to my home at reduced speed. I had to stop two more times en route to cut more separated tread away. I arrived home safely, and the car's in the garage awaiting a change over to the spare. The car (a 2011 A4 P+ with 18" sport package, etc.) has around 18.5K miles on these OEM tires, which are probably within maybe 5K miles of needing replacement. The air pressures are at spec, and the RF tire retained its air. I had no warning of tire damage prior to this. To say I'm perplexed is an understatement. I have a tire and wheel warranty package with the car from the orginal purchase, and I have an appointment to bring the car into the dealer (using the spare, thank you) on Tuesday morning. I'll post further as new info comes in.

Brian Cecil

The damage turned out to be a detached strip of tread going completely around the tire's inner circumference, around 3/4 inch wide. It was torn off completely, down to the metal reinforcing. The only time I've seen tire damage like this was from the effects of extreme negative camber, which this car doesn't have. So, no more driving until Tuesday morning, when I take the car in to the Audi dealer (driving on the spare).

irenesbob

Sounds a bit like the problems Formula One boys were having with Pirelli's at a few circuits this year. Luckily I have Cont's on my Audi, and so far so good.
Good luck Tuesday.

Moviela

Tires have separation all the time. It is the fault of the tire, not the driver.

Your problem now is that you cannot change a single tire to a new one. The Torsen differentials will not like it.

The other three have to go also.

Brian Cecil

Yeah, that's pretty much what I figured. I really don't relish the idea of driving with the space-saver spare, so I'm not driving the car until I go to the dealer.
I e-mailed the U.S. Pirelli distributor about the tread separation. Be interesting to see if they respond.

Brian Cecil

Well, PTNA, the U.S. Pirelli distributor, replied (with what looks like a canned response) for me to contact the Audi dealer for a possible warranty repair.

gunsmoker

You can get a P7 with a similar wear from ebay if you are willing to drive with the spare a few days. I doubt they will replace all tires under warranty.
You may be able to find a place that will shave the new tire.

Brian Cecil

I drove without incident yesterday to the dealer, Keyes Audi in Sherman Oaks, CA. The "low tire pressure" warning came on a few miles into the trip, but I figured it was due to the smaller rolling radius of the space-saver spare fooling the system, so I continued on. The dealer diagnosed the tire's failure as the result of excessive toe-in on the RF wheel (surprising to me, since there had been no abnormal steering behavior), and thus not the result of a road hazard, specifically. Therefore, no coverage from the road hazard insurance. Not a great loss anyway, since the car's tires were in their last few thousand miles of life, and the road hazard payoff is all based on pro-rating the tread wear to pay just a portion of the cost of a replacement tire. So my payoff probably wouldn't have been much over $20 or so for the one tire that failed.
I went ahead and bought a full set of four new P7s, and had an alignment done. My service advisor, Tony, gave me a welcome break on the cost, due to my good relationship with the new car and service departments there at Keyes extending over the past ten years. Its nice to have people still rewarding customers for years' of loyalty to their business. And I think I'll just put an alignment check on my "do every two years" list, regardless of how normal the steering feels.

Brian Cecil

I found a current thread here in the A5/S5/RS5 forum concerning an identical tread wear issue on the S5 and RS5, due to front-end alignment. There's a photo 3 posts into the thread showing an identical tire failure point as my A4. The bad thing about tread wear at the extreme inner edge of a front tire is its very difficult to see that part of the tire when just casually looking around the car. This thread goes on for several pages, with a number of posts from different owners experiencing the problem.

https://www.audiworld.com/forums/sho....php?t=2818709