So we all knew how my car bit the dust with a transmission. Which i replaced for 4500....more problems. Pulling allot to the left i can change a line with out touching the sterring whel with in a few meters.

Problem the continental toruing tires. Apparently according the the shops in town they have a tendency to spilt cuasing vibrations and a very very dangerous situation.

Thought id let everyone know

 

$4500!? holy crap

 

alignment?

 

Yes, $4500 or thereabouts for tranny swap.

Check the inner edges of your front tires. There is likely a groove worn into the tire there if your alignment has been even slightly out of spec.

 

I had this happen too - Continental conti touringcontact tire. A belt shifted in the tire internally, and initially gave the feeling of a poorly balanced wheel or slightly bent wheel.

Then one day for no apparent reason, the belt decided to come out of the side of it, basically destroying the tire....

Be careful with those things.

George

 

Nope alignment was fin. This is the sencond set of tires on the jag that was about to blow up enternally.

I got a set of new tires, 609 bucks nothing special. An gave the jag a wash =)

 

yikes that sucks ! lucky you have an extra rim...

I traded my X-type in last week on a truck ... good luck

 

That seems odd for a German tire. I would be curious to know the load rating from that tire, since for some reason (maybe popularity?) 225/40/18 tends to vary load ratings more than other sizes.

 

From what I can tell the 225/40 is a LR of 92, and your 205/55 should even be higher.

 

My belt shift / failure was on the factory supplied 205/55/16 Continental tire.

I haven't done a think to my X-Type except for aftermarket stereo. It's my winter / bad weather beater.

George

 

Sorry, dunno how I reposted that...

I've had two different continental tires fail due to belt shifts. Both in the same size, but interestingly enough NOT on the same car. The X-Type, and a Mecedes C-Class. The X-Type was the only one where the belt came out of the sidewall though. I used to have a picture of it somewhere.

Needless to say I will NOT be buying a Continental tire again.

George

 

According to my research (thanks bing.com) the load ratings on both sizes are always over 92, so they are fine. That should be a recall then. They are super good as season tires though, so its a shame the suffer from dangerous quality issues.

 

If that was an internal failure of the tires with the belt seperating wouldn't they replace the tire or at least pro rate a portion of it? That seesm like a manufacturing defect.

Now that you have new tires is it driving properly again or is the severe pulling still there?

 

NO more vibration in car, no more sterring vibration and shaking. But works fine. I test drove a new commander last night, witht he overland package, and it was amazing only problem is being a student i dont have funds and nobody is serious about buying my car.

 

I think I have the same issue with one of my front tires. Looks like the belt has shifted and I am getting a lot of vibration in the steering wheel. I can see the belt a little now on the outer edge of the tire, but there is still a lot of tread left there. Ill be chaning them out this weekend, but won't drive on them until then thanks to the advice posted above. Could have been a bad situation.

 

Good contribution stu, keeping the other x-type owners informed...even if only a handfull see this thread, you may have saved them future damage.

 

DO NOT DRIVE ON THEM AT ALL

This can be very dangerous and even fatal. Once the belt is gone....its out of control for the car. It very important you have it looked after.

And you all welcome, just trying to help my fellow or former jag owners from expensive problems and body work downt he road.

 

I wish I could still find the picture of what my tire looked like. Ironically, it was new years eve 2007-2008 when it did it, and the ONLY open place was wal-mart so I ended up with 2 uniroyal long touring tires on the car, which have remarkable tread wear lol. I only drive the X in bad weather / winter, so I don't drive it that aggressively but they have been great so far.

It was shocking to see the tire fail like that.

George

 

Shifted and split belts are not a rarity or unique to any one manufacturer, they've been around since Charles Goodyear started playing with carbon black.

Shifted belts should not be confused with tread belt separation, the latter being of true danger.

 

The continental tires mentioned love to shoot the belt out of the tire. Not as bad as tread belt separation, but the steel belt coming out of the sidewall where it meets the tread and causing the tire to fail as if someone had ripped a 12" slash in it with a switchblade, on an otherwise perfectly good (tread wise) tire isn't normal. If one looked at one of these tires, you would think it would be a classic driven hard while under inflated failure, however that is not the case.

George