Watch your Continental DWS06's

sm105k

Active member
Cliffnotes: I was having issues with older Continental DWSo6's on my 13 SHO. I had two with compromised sidewalls. Both bubbled but did not fail. They were manufactured 0711. Check your tires, the older tires are know to have sidewall issues. However, I am told the Continental has fixed the situation.



When I bought my SHO, it had the Continental DSW06 in 245/45/20 on it. I have a PP so clearly the stock tires were replaced. I don't know when. One tire had been replaced by the dealer Dec 2017.

About a month ago, I got a wicked vibration and pulled over. Low and behold one of the "older" tires had a huge sidewall bubble on the inside. I suspect the one that was replaced had the same issue. Both were on the front. I went to Discount Tire and had it I replaced it. So running tally, two new tires on the front and two old out back.

Last week I had another sidewall bubble in one of the older tires....grrr... Replaced it, so now I have three new and one old. I am leaving work today, to replace my last old one just for piece of mind. So now I will have four new tires, on rims I don't want. First world problems.

I talked to Discount Tire and they said the older model Continental DSW06 had sidewall issues on heavy cars with bigger torque numbers. Esp the Chrysler 300C with AWD. He said Continental did address the situation and the newer generation (the ones on my car right now) and they haven't had any issues in his particular store. The Discount I go to is in North Scottsdale, AZ and is literally right next to their Corporate Head Quarters. They are alway busy, and he see alot of the 300C.

So now to the tech part of my post. My new tires have a build date of 2817. My older tire still on my car right now has a build date of 0711. Build date on tires is easy to figure out if you don't know. Look for a four digit number. First two numbers are the week they were manufactured, and last two are year. So my new tires were manufactured the 28th week of 2017. My old ones were the 0711, so 7th week of 2011.

I really want to know when the older Conti's were put on my car, because I would assume it was in 2015. That is pure speculation. I bought my car with 51k on it. All the old tires still have 80% thread on them. The previous owner drove 10k miles a year. It adds up in my head. If that is the case, why did a tire shop put four year old (brand new) tires on a car? Like I said I am speculating.

All in all, I love my Conti's and if these tires are fixed my SHO will probably live on them for the rest of the time I own the car.
 
Interesting info and thanks for sharing, I had not heard anything about that, but I only ran the DW model on my previous car.

As for the date code.  I doubt a shop is going to check date code on tires before installing?  They order XYZ tire from the warehouse, they are going to verify it is XYZ tire and the size is correct and off they go.  Not making excuses for them, but coming from a procurement/shop support/distribution background, the logistics of trying to guarantee fresh tires is more than just a little complex, and likely a complete nightmare to try and manage so not surprising to me they might have installed new tires with an old date code?

If they were to find and old date now they are faced with trying to tell the warehouse they do not want them and getting "new" ones, and if the warehouse will entertain the idea and they have all 1-2-3yr old stock?  Puts the customer further delayed.  I could see a shop/chain quickly end up blacklisted if they started rejecting tires just based on build date.
 
I completely understand the wharehouse and logistics part. I posted it because I have had two sidewall compromises and the I willing to bet the tire that was replaced because of the same issues.  Once the gentleman told me about the issues with 300C's I was like...wait a minute.  Looks like the Bimmers guys were having sidewall issues too.

https://www.google.com/search?q=contiental+dws06+sidewall+failures&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS750US750&oq=contiental+dws06+sidewall+failures&aqs=chrome..69i57.18479j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
 
SHOdded said:
Do you know the country of origin for the old vs new tires?

That is a damn good question.  I will have them do some research about that when I head to Discount this afternoon. I will report the findings when I get them.
 
ZSHO said:
wow that is not good.  At least it is a unique size on that recall.

Looks like they are still selling some Continental, maybe just not in SHO size?
This is sizes for my last car, still shows stock.
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/TireSearchResults.jsp?tireIndex=0&autoMake=Cadillac&autoYear=2006&autoModel=STS-V&autoModClar=&frontWidth=255%2F&frontRatio=45&frontDiameter=18&frontSortCode=54200&rearWidth=275%2F&rearRatio=40&rearDiameter=19&rearSortCode=57752

All this tire talk, making me want to get the 275's installed RIGHT NOW.  :drive:
 
While I love how my DWS' perform they have been nothing but a problem since new.  No issues with side walls but they all were cupped from the go but it took me a while to get to that conclusion. I thought they'd wear themselves even with overly monitoring pressures but nothing got better.  Needless to say come Tue they're getting chucked even though they have probably a good 10k miles of life left in them.  I cannot take the vibrations any longer and I've been living with them for a while.  I'm going out on a limb and having some G-MAX AS-05's spooned on.
 
r1crusher said:
While I love how my DWS' perform they have been nothing but a problem since new.  No issues with side walls but they all were cupped from the go but it took me a while to get to that conclusion. I thought they'd wear themselves even with overly monitoring pressures but nothing got better.  Needless to say come Tue they're getting chucked even though they have probably a good 10k miles of life left in them.  I cannot take the vibrations any longer and I've been living with them for a while.  I'm going out on a limb and having some G-MAX AS-05's spooned on.

Very interesting.  What size are you running.  I am going to run with mine because I just spent $900 and honestly she isnt daily driven anymore. Thank you for the feed back.
 
sm105k said:
Very interesting.  What size are you running.  I am going to run with mine because I just spent $900 and honestly she isnt daily driven anymore. Thank you for the feed back.

I'm running stock sizing and I cannot deal with the ever increasing vibrations from the cupping which recently has gotten worse.  Three of my tires are dated 0415 and one 0315 so they all appear to be very very early production runs.  I had considered another set but for some reason the price on them have gone up since I first got mine.  Again, love the way the perform in all aspects...rain....snow....dry...etc.  But I am not going to go through what I did with these again.
 
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