While doing weekly maintenance I noticed an odd distortion on the tire. Kind of a wave. I cannot feel it, probably because it does not rise causing a bump, just a wave.

I'm going to order a new tire to be safe, but curious on what happened under the surface and is it just a manufacturing defect or something with the mounting.? The tire has been mounted for about 930 miles and it just happened in the past 100 miles.

Tire casings have the structural part, the casing cords usually in a ribbon/strip like form before molding, and the rubber part. The rubber will conform to whatever shape it's being "told" to adopt by the casing cords. When the strips of casing threads gets deformed the rubber follows suit too. casing cords can break, shift, be poorly positioned when molded. These situations are fairly common and, to a degree, present in every tire (when new and having passed the manufacture's QC test these are so minor few notice) and can develop over time and use. Do replace the tire ASAP as if the casing cords are breaking the tire could fail during riding, the resulting change of control might not go over so well Andy

Thanks for the detailed information.

Some tires wave when they see other tires.

I call that "the dreaded S-bulge". I got one at mile 80 of a century ride; luckily it lasted to the finish.

In other words; your tire is broken and needs to be replaced.

fwiw: this tire came to me in the mail in a big flat box



It mounted up OK & didn't wobble when pumped up. but I wrote to the retailer to so they would know. they said sometimes tires get squished in transport but will likely cause no ill effect. but I thought they should know one of their ppl put that tire, in that conditions in a box to ship to a customer & the box was not damaged at all. it was their employee's decision to ship that product to me. they offered to replace it if it caused a problem, but it didn't, so I used it all winter. when I took it off the deformation came back, but not as severe. so this tire is permanently deformed when not pressurized. I plan on using it again next winter

I have other tires that have "tire wobble" even tho there is no visible deformation. they are wide mountain bike tires. I massage them as best I can when mounting, taking quite a bit of time to remove the subtle wobble but I can never get rid of it entirely. I bought those same tires in 2 different sizes & use them on two different bikes. of each pair, there is one with more wobble that the other. but to look at them you wouldn't notice anything, until you spin them

thanks for sharing! that's a pretty severe wave for a tire to develop after you've been riding it. maybe you can get a discount from the manufacturer on your replacement

The sidewall ripple should spread out with air pressure/inflation. The bead kink, if steel wire, can be "back bent" with one's fingers to straighten it. If this tire has a folding bead then the kink isn't. Andy

schwalbe marathon winters have a wire bead. ask me how I know ...

Once that wave starts it never stops. You might get another hundred or two miles out of it before it blows. Might as well replace it before that happens.