Burst tire damage

[Iceni John]

Yesterday as I was working on my bus in the yard my friend drove in with his RV, with a completely shredded inner rear tire.   (FWIW, it's a 12-year old Michelin, made in Great Britain?!)   However, his burst tire is the least of his problems.   All the wires and an air line that were next to the tire are snapped apart and wrapped around the wheel.   Even worse, one can see scrape marks where the tire casing flailed against the end of his propane tank.   And to add insult to injury, a small cabinet inside by the front door is completely destroyed because a wire that was connected to something inside was yanked back when it wrapped itself around the rear wheel.  Yikes!

His RV had no protection whatsoever for the wires that were torn apart, and there isn't even any shield to protect the propane tank from everyday road debris, let alone from steel belts pummeling it.   I suggested to him that he disconnect both his start and house batteries to prevent a short starting a fire later.   And to think his RV is one of the (slightly) better ones out there.

Ironically, all weekend I had been making some additional wheel arch shields out of galvanized steel to protect my newly-installed dump valves and waste tanks.   I want to keep road grime and water from getting on them, plus having some additional metal between them and the tires is A Good Thing if I had a blowout.   My two propane cylinders will be inside a box made from tough 1/8" steel, plus there's two more similar thicknesses of steel between their box and the tires  -  3/8" of steel should be enough!   All my air lines and electrical runs are protected inside the frame rails, so no worries there.

So, this should be a wake-up call to some of us to check how vulnerable our buses' critical systems are to damage by blown-out tires.   A few hours protecting them now may possibly prevent a lot of anguish later if a tire decides to come apart at speed.

John       

[rv_safetyman]

John, thanks for the reminder. 

When we were doing tradeshows, we heard all kinds of horror stories.  We also have witnessed a lot of wheelwell/body damage from a blown tire while driving down the highway.

One of the worst situations I have witnessed was an Eagle returning from the Quartzsite rally several years ago.  He was obviously having problem at a rest stop.  That problem was a charging system issue, but as we talked, he said it had not been a fun trip for him.  He knew that he had an inside dual that had a slow leak, but forgot to air it up before he left the rally.  The tire blew and as he exited the bus he could smell propane.  Turns out that the person converting the bus ran a propane line beside the tire and when the tire blew it ruptured the line (plus a lot of other damage)!!!!   He was really lucky that the steel in the blown tire belt did not cause a spark.

Even though we are no longer in the business, I still strongly recommend a tire pressure monitor system.  One blown tire more than pays for the system.

Jim

[lostagain]

Replacing the 12 year old tire might have been a good start to prevent a blow-out...

But yea, it will do a lot of damage: I had a rear tire blow on my pick-up a few years ago on the free-way. Destroyed most of that side of the box.

JC

[Oonrahnjay]

      Some springtimes, I work for the NC Forest Service.  In flat-land eastern NC, they fight forest fires with bulldozers and special plows; they transport these on low-loaders.  One was on it's way to a fire at about 80MPH when the left steer tire went.  It wiped everything off the left side of the tractor (the entire fender, air cleaner, turn signal cluster, wide-load rearview mirror, the bumper extension, etc.  There was nothing left on the rim but paint (and not much of that).  How he got it stopped more-or-less-straight, I'll never know.  These things can do BIG damage.

[TomC]

As Jim stated along with one of the seminars at "The Rally" about wireless tire pressure monitoring-the number one reason a tire blows is because of excess heat.  The number one reason for excess heat is running the tire with too low tire air pressure.  Keep the tire pressure up, and you'll practically never have a blow out. The remedy for this is to have a wireless tire monitoring system like Pressure Pro.

I have Pressure Pro on my bus an it works well-telling when the tire pressure is too high and when it is too low.  Higher tire pressure can mean to hot a tire.  This can be caused, obviously, by a hot day-or a dragging brake or bad wheel bearing.  Many say that you should also have temperature sensor-but if you have high and low pressure sensing-you really have both scenarios covered.  Because we go back to the first comment-high heat that causes tire failure is usually caused by to low air pressure.  And with the big tires we use costing over $500.00 each (quality tire, not some Chinese POS), we need to monitor the tires constantly.  Whenever I stop I always go around a feel with my hand the temp of every tire.  If one is getting hot, figure out why.

Having a temp sensor in the tire monitoring system would be an extra plus-but not necessary.  Good Luck, TomC

[siberyd]

About 25 years ago I was called to investigate a multi-vehicle and 1 bus accident. Seems the bus, a Neoplan commuter bus, had the inside left dual burst. And the left outside dual's rim broke away from  the axle and proceeded to collide with 12 passenger cars ranging from BMW to Novas. It was a mess. According to the driver
he was traveling at 70mph when it happened.

While the bus was sitting on its left axle in the #3 lane the right duals failed and  were launched off the highway narrowly
missing a school bus.

Accident cause, a bucket of railroad spikes fell on the roadway just
in front of the bus and one spike punctured the left inside dual.

[Scott & Heather]

Sometimes flats are not drama though. I've seen semi tires blow several times on the highway and it wasn't drama at all. During testing of Michelin's super singles, they made a series of videos showing actual staged blowouts (using explosives on the sidewall) and in none of those videos does it show a bus or semi actually having a violent reaction to a blown dual, steer, or tag. It just depends on the dynamics. It's far worse for the stuff (air lines etc) around your tire than it may be for your actual driving experience. But not always...sometimes blowouts cause  violent reactions...just never seen it happen that way before with my own eyes....and that's after clocking 45,000 miles per year for several years straight.

[Len Silva]

Many years ago, when the bread truck was making a delivery to our house (that will give you an idea of just how many years ago), he was PARKED about three feet from the house when the right rear tire blew out.  It took out an area of siding on the house about three by four feet.

[HB of CJ]

Years ago we viewed films depicting blow outs or split rim failures both at speed and on the tire change bead breaker.  Very graphic.  Crown Supercoaches (schoolies) had heavy plate steel lining the the wheel wells and lots of room for tire chains.  The driveshafts also had two big steel driveshaft retainers.  HB of CJ (old coot)