Tire Eating Audi

[lrickert at covad.net]

my 4kq has destroyed one of the rear tires (passenger side) in less than a 
couple of thousand miles with no track days or any real hard driving, air 
pressure was maintained and the temperatures moderate all summer (this is 
Seattle after all).  

here is a picture of the now useless and unsafe Kumho 712  (205-50-15)

http://home.covad.net/~rickert/tire1.jpg

the rest of the tires are fine and look like they did when I put them on in the 
spring. There is a total a maybe 10k miles on these tires over two "summers" 

Any ideas of what happened. Obviously I will take it in to get aligned before 
putting any more tires on it but this sort of damage can't just be a mild 
alignment problem. The car hasn't been hit or anything like that, I haven't even 
done any gravel road rallies in it recently.  ball joint and everything else is 
tight and nothing looks bent. The tie rods are the same age as the tire and are 
in good shape so it would seem unlikely the toe is too far out.   Could going 
off the edge of a curb cutout do something like this to the suspension? 

the handling was perfectly normal until it started sliding on wet manhole covers 
which is when I checked the tread and found out something was wrong. I guess I 
managed to add air without seeing this which is scary. I think the damage has 
happened even more recently than last spring, considering how fast it has gone 
in the last few weeks I don't think it would have lasted this long at it present 
rate. There has been some knocking in the rear despite new struts, bearings ... 

any ideas or insight would be most helpful. 

thanks

Luke