Is there a problem with Avon Storm II rear tires?

[BigTom]

First: I am on a Connie, and Avon has certified the Ultra II for my bike.
Second: I have just used up the second set, without any complaint. In fact, I love the tires.
Third: I ordered a pair of PR3 from Tim this morning. First time in around 100k miles that I haven't had an Avon on...

 

[nice111]

i have storms on my 1300 and they have been fantasic, they transformed the handleing from the original battlax's both in wet and dry and give me so much more confidence in the bike, i cant praise them enough but spose everyone has there own opinion, i have been running them now two up and on my own in all weather, straight line and twisties for around 4k miles and still very little signs of wear and here in the UK we have plenty of potholes to catch you out aswell as very slippy manhole covers, i would def by again and im currently looking at the idea of fitting them to my st1100 aswell

 

[George]

i cant praise them enough but spose everyone has there own opinion,

Glad yur happy with'em but the observed failures documented in this thread are not "opinions."

 

[Raven]

@nice111

I absolutely agree with the confidence inspiring handling and praised the Storms to the moon but I've had nothing but problems with the Storm 2's available in the US. It may very well be that in England, y'all get a different batch than the rest of us and there's better quality control but to have three of them have issues at the point where the dual compound meets (and that's just my personal experience with one of those "issues" being a total delamination failure causing a pretty extreme crash and others have experienced similar failures), I really have to question the quality control.

Once again LOVE the way the Storms transformed the ST's handling. They stick like glue and are so much more responsive than the Bridgestone's ever were (that's my opinion). However, I'm not so thrilled with the failures (that's my experience).

 

[nice111]

Glad yur happy with'em but the observed failures documented in this thread are not "opinions."

As mechanic i look at the bigger picture and realise there can several undermining reasons for failure of any component aswell as several scenario's for the same result, i understand there maybe many people suffered these failings but unfortunately unless someone has the tyre proffessionally tested under controlled conditions to check for manufacture defects then all of these cases do actually remain as just "opinions" and on that basis my post was correct when i said that
sorry George this wasnt intended to have a go but i must get my point across thats all

 

[nice111]

@nice111

I absolutely agree with the confidence inspiring handling and praised the Storms to the moon but I've had nothing but problems with the Storm 2's available in the US. It may very well be that in England, y'all get a different batch than the rest of us and there's better quality control but to have three of them have issues at the point where the dual compound meets (and that's just my personal experience with one of those "issues" being a total delamination failure causing a pretty extreme crash and others have experienced similar failures), I really have to question the quality control.

Once again LOVE the way the Storms transformed the ST's handling. They stick like glue and are so much more responsive than the Bridgestone's ever were (that's my opinion). However, I'm not so thrilled with the failures (that's my experience).

perhaps your right and maybe u do get different quality control over there, i must admit i dont personally know anyone here that has had failures and i do know that we do have pretty stringent rules governing tyre contruction here so perhaps might be good for some of you guys to get together and ask ur goverments to control them better if this is the case but obviously this would still mean having some tyres proffesionally tested to prove the cause of failure first and then u would be in a position to take legal action against avon for marketing potentially lethal merchandise
thats what happens over here if problems like that occur anyway

 

[nice111]

I absolutely loved the Avon Storm II.....until it decided to 'blow out' and strand me in the middle of the Mojave desert.
One difference 'tween the UK and the US is we have temps that can easily go over 120F and that could contribute to the failures. YMMV.

tes im sure that the temp could possibly be a contributing factor especially when you consider what temp the tire might be running at once you got it warmed up in those sort of temp, we are more used to around the 26 degrees celcius at this time of year and it dont get much higher but if we are lucky and get the odd day better than that they slap us with hose pipe bans and call it a drought (and we are an island surround by effing water) im telling you guys you dont know how lucky you are ober there sometimes. on the flip side of the coin when we get more than inch of snow the countries roads go into caos and they declare emergancy situation, its absolute madness here these days to how things used to be, trust our goverment needs a good kick up th jacksie !!! i for one have always believed we should lose the royals and the prime minister and instead have a president like you guys do, ( i know some of you though might disagree with losing the royals) but trust me all they do is take taxpayers money all the time and dont do anything constructive with it

 

[nice111]

@nice111

I absolutely agree with the confidence inspiring handling and praised the Storms to the moon but I've had nothing but problems with the Storm 2's available in the US. It may very well be that in England, y'all get a different batch than the rest of us and there's better quality control but to have three of them have issues at the point where the dual compound meets (and that's just my personal experience with one of those "issues" being a total delamination failure causing a pretty extreme crash and others have experienced similar failures), I really have to question the quality control.

Once again LOVE the way the Storms transformed the ST's handling. They stick like glue and are so much more responsive than the Bridgestone's ever were (that's my opinion). However, I'm not so thrilled with the failures (that's my experience).

that picture is pretty shocking and i must admit i have never seen a bike tire go like that , however i have seen same thing on car tyres but that was a few years back when it was considered ok to have remoulds in the UK ( this is when old used caracasses would go back into the press and have new rubber applied to it along with heat to mould it to the carcass) they alwasy looked like brand ne tyres when done but many times they failed on the road usually when on the motorways and usually went dramatically with bits of rubber flying all over the motorway and into the paths on other vehicles travelling behind, after some years they banned the use of them here but they do still allow them on heavy good vehicles as they are restricted to 56mph but from time to time we still see them fail on those trucks ( incase you wondering part of my job means attending breakdowns and raod traffic incidents over here so there not much i havent seen over the years especially the carnage on the motorways) has to be said though overall there are not that many accidents that i see are directly related to a tyre problem. whats your laws on the tread wear over there?? over hear you must have 1.6mm tread spanning across the central 3 quarters of the trad width for a car and for bikes and trucks its 1mm but this tread must be all they way round the circumferance, if you are found to have tread wear below these limits you get ?60 fine and 3 penalty points on your licence, thats 3 points per tyre and we use a toting up system so if you reach 12 points within 4 years you have you get banned from driving

 

[Raven]

Just as an FYI, my delamination occurred in November and it was cool enough that I had on my electric vest at the time. So 100+ F temps weren't a factor in this one.

 

[nice111]

maybe but on the hand i spose we have to consider expansion and contraction of a varying climate over periods of time, at the end of the day i dont think any of us could say one way or the other in these cases , it just comes down someone taking a stand against avon to force better testing on them over there, it just seams a little starnge that you guys get the problem but we dont seam to get it dont you think

 

[George]

Nice, ya need to read the thread on Dace's (Raven) blow out. The tire was new, ~2000 miles. She's a pro rider and instructor, knows her stuff. The failure of the tire resulted in a serious crash that could have been catastrophic. To imply the failure of that tire and several others is "opinion" is being myopic. Don't mean to toss names, but we now know of at least 4 of these tires that have failed similarly, all along the mating joint between the dissimalar tread compounds. Tho only empirical data, it is observed and very similar.

Comparison: would you call the cracks in several ST1100 blocks "opinion"? Pictures of the cracks look virtually identical, coolant leaking there has resulted in many bikes being removed from the road. It is certainly not my "opinion" my black 91 is setting in the corner of the garage with a fatal flaw.

 

[Byron]

I ran the Storm and Storm 2 Ultra's but needed more mileage than they could provide and moved back to the PR2's. Things beyond my control have kept me from riding as much this last year and I'm about to go 1 year without a tire change when normally I'd have 3. Because of this I was considering going back to the Storm 2 Ultra's for the extra grip but because of these problem I'm hesitant as not really wanting to temp the tire gods. I hope Avon is paying attention to these threads because unless they can address the problem I won't be going back to the Storm. That is difficult for me to say because Avon was the first tire I went to in 2006 after wearing out the Dunlop's that were on the bike. I've always liked Avon tires but I'm not a fan of catastrophic failures.

 

[George]

Avon has had a spotty record for years. The ol' ST23 taught me what the 1100 could do in East TN. Then production variations took away the confidence. Still remember those good lessons, tho. Recent events with the Storm II have driven me away again. Guess we'll have to wait for the next iteration to bring'em back to the top.

 

[Larry Ramel]

Right! It dosen`t make any difference how well they handle if they cost you your bike or your life.

 

[Firstpeke]

ANY tyre can suffer a failure/puncture...... it is not unique to Avon or any other brand.....

I find it quite amazing that we can put one and one together and get a very large number.....

My STorms are fine.

Just saying.

Following my experience whilst working for Michelin I would not have a D****p on anything I ever own, or a P*****i. This decision however is not based on a few isolated incidents but six years if seeing many, many, many problems with aforesaid manufacturers products.
If I could afford to put Michelin on my bike as well as my car I probably would, but Avon provides the performance and price point that suits me.

Like others here though, that is my personal choice.

I just find it hard to understand why a few incidents means a tyre is totally rejected?

Touch paper lit.
Flame away.

 

[Throttlejockey]

ANY tyre can suffer a failure/puncture...... it is not unique to Avon or any other brand.....

I find it quite amazing that we can put one and one together and get a very large number.....

My STorms are fine.

Just saying.

Following my experience whilst working for Michelin I would not have a D****p on anything I ever own, or a P*****i. This decision however is not based on a few isolated incidents but six years if seeing many, many, many problems with aforesaid manufacturers products.
If I could afford to put Michelin on my bike as well as my car I probably would, but Avon provides the performance and price point that suits me.

Like others here though, that is my personal choice.

I just find it hard to understand why a few incidents means a tyre is totally rejected?

Touch paper lit.
Flame away.

Well, mostly because it's not recommended for the ST1300 for one thing.

I don't need to see 100 failures to convince me after seeing what happened to Dace. As well as other guys getting lucky with the delamination.

 

[nice111]

Nice, ya need to read the thread on Dace's (Raven) blow out. The tire was new, ~2000 miles. She's a pro rider and instructor, knows her stuff. The failure of the tire resulted in a serious crash that could have been catastrophic. To imply the failure of that tire and several others is "opinion" is being myopic. Don't mean to toss names, but we now know of at least 4 of these tires that have failed similarly, all along the mating joint between the dissimalar tread compounds. Tho only empirical data, it is observed and very similar.

Comparison: would you call the cracks in several ST1100 blocks "opinion"? Pictures of the cracks look virtually identical, coolant leaking there has resulted in many bikes being removed from the road. It is certainly not my "opinion" my black 91 is setting in the corner of the garage with a fatal flaw.

im not disputing anything anyone is saying mate !! what i am saying is that these can only be treated as "opinions" because there nobody has obtained prossesional testing of the tyres to prove there are faults with them and that means they will continue onto the market unless proved to be defective or dangerous but only you guys over there can do that to help yourselves. maybe all of you that have had problems should send your pictures to avon outlining the problems and maybe threaten them with having lab testing done on the tyres , if u all work as a group effort then the manufacture has to listen to reason and have independent tests carried out, its you guys im thinking of so as to avoid more problems for more riders, like i said we dont seam to have the problem in the UK so something must be different with your tyres or maybe even a large number in a bad batch got through? i dont know if that could happen but just a thought !!. its no godd everyone talking here giving opinions, its action that counts to save a life !!
if there is something wrong with that tire making it unsafe then the public at large surely has a right to know they could be purchasing such merchandise,
you guys should act together now rather than talk about here because i am sure avon wont be watching this and even if they did they would take no action based on the threads here as it proves nothing at all, and thats what i am trying to say, no amount of pictures or comments here is proof and thats what you guys need to make a stand for your yourselves

 

[Firstpeke]

So I guess if we collate ALL failures of ALL tyre brands used on ST's, we are going to have NO tyre options at all......

Even 10 failures out of 1000 is small, especially if the tyres have been examined properly and found to have damage resulting in the incidents quoted.

On the other hand, if the tyres were never examined properly, we are making ASSUMPTIONS...... this is far more dangerous!

I mean if we rejected every product that had a problem, given the various issues we have seen over the years with ST's, what would you be riding?

Baby, bathwater, out, throw, not, the, let's, with........ make a sentence from these words.

 

[nice111]

if the numbers are low it dont really matter if they a proved to be dangerous and its not about just the ST, im sure this problem could be applied to many bikes, but at the end of the day there is the requirements of the law to uphold with any manufacturer of any product, those laws are there to protect the public from danger as much a possible, so if there is an issue to be proved then it should be before we all hear about someone being involved in a fatal incident !!!
you pay a premium for most bike tyres compared to average car tyres and thats partly because they are engineered to enure safety is high on the scale and that all costs money, and its money that you guys pay so you are entitled to ensure your money is invested in the manner it should be.


heres another approach to getting yourselves heard, why dont one of you just call up your local newspaper and ask them to point the pc screen over to this these threads and just maybe you might find the investigations start rolling, that sometimes works wonders for us over here in the UK

 

[Throttlejockey]

Doesn't matter if it's an issue or not to Avon. They don't recommend that tire for the 1300.