Blow Out..2X..WHY?

Perhaps someone could at least give us an explanation or 2 as to why we got 2 blow outs.  We were on our way for a week camping.  Fifth wheel is 4 years old, 2 sets or tires per side in tandem, tires are GoodYear, probably got about 10,000 miles on them, pressure was spot on, TPMS monitor on.  We are travelling along and thankfully only at about 55 mph when BAM.  Pulled off to the side, one of the tires had blown.  Took a couple hours but finally someone came out to put our spare on.  We decided at that time to go back home, only about 30 miles from home.  Got back on the opposite bound highway, travelled for maybe 5 miles, and BAM and sister tire blew.  Pressure Pro registered nothing.  In fact I had just checked the tire pressures about 2 minutes before and all were great.  The only thing we can think of is that we ran over something that sliced into both tires.  One immediately and then the other after a few miles.  If that is the case, do they blow like that.  I kind of thought it would be a slow leak.  Significant damage was done to the RV, going to have to go into the shop.  We are going to put 4 brand new (no China bombs) tires on it after repairs are done.  We are fortunate that we are all fine and we were able to get off the road without any incident.  But we are scratching our heads about WHY?

No one here could really give you a definitive answer to that question. Without being somewhat of an expert and actually examining the tire, it would all be speculation.

Yes thanks I do realize.  Just wondered if we had run over something would it blow like that, as mentioned I thought it would be like a slow leak, loosing pressure slowly then our TPMS would have picked that up. 

I could understand it if they were duals. One of the dual tires blows and when shredding it damages the second tire. It has happened to me while truck driving and with our new motorhome. I suppose it is still possible your first blow out damaged the sister tire, weakening it. I hope the damage to the RV wasn't too extensive, so you can get back on the road. 

How old were your tires?  Did you check date code on these tires?  RV tire life is more about age than mileage or tread wear. 

There is something to be said for the possibility of one blow out damaging the other tire. Another possibility for the 2nd blowout is that when the first tire blew it put all of the load on the matching dual tire and, if it was in the same condition as the first tire, that extra load took it over the threshold of failure. But, it only failed after you replaced the first blown tier and drove down the road.  Of course, this is all speculation. 

Having experienced blowouts in the past in my old Class C I felt lucky it didn't do more damage to my coach since this can be an explosive event.  I pay a lot of attention to my date codes and now only keep tires 7 years max.

You said the pressure was "Spot on" but have you weighed the trailer.. and which of the pressures did you consider to be the "Spot"
1: Pressure molded into side wall "Maximum load xxxx pounds at Maximum pressure of YY PSI"
2: Pressure on the sticker inside the RV
3: Pressure determined by weighing the rig each wheel (not tire wheel) and using the tire maker's web page to calculate the proper pressure from the charts provided?  (The proper way)

2nd: Where were tires made.. We refer to some tires as "China Bombs" applies to the fan on my Advent air A/C too, that looks a bit like a tire and sure enough BOOM it blew up.

Finally.. Why did the sister tire blow... Well when the first tire blew the "Sister" had to take all the load, 2x what it was designed for, till you got the first replaced... That's why you never replace just one. it was seriously damaged in just the short distance between BANG and Stop.

But I'd get that rig weighed. Odds are you are heavy.

Actually the tires were pretty good tires, or so I thought, GoodYear.  Not sure of the date on the tires, rig is a 2013.  Rig wasn't heavy, hardly anything in it at all as we were only going for a short week trip and was basically empty.  But thanks for the info, it helps somewhat. 

Being the trailer is a 2013, there's a very good chance that the tires are from 2012. (or older). I think the general consensus is that ST tires "age out" at around 5 years.
Here's how to read the date code:
http://www.rvforum.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=202:tire-manufacturing-date-codes&catid=27&Itemid=132

A TPMS won't help prevent a blowout, unless the TPMS limitations for tire pressure and/or temperature have first been exceeded. A tire with a weak sidewall, for example, caused by poor construction, age or road damage, might hold air just fine until it finally gives out - oftentimes with a bang.

Kev

Does your TPMS show temps?

What was the outside temperature?

What was your speed at the time of the blowout?

Do you have any pics of the shredded tires?

I had a 5th wheel pass me on I-5 yesterday, temps in the low 80's? using both outside lanes to keep up his 80mph speed. I thought he was overdoing it a bit.

It does show temps, and they were ok.  We were doing about 55 MPH.  It was a warm day, but not crazy hot about 75 -80 degrees.  I really feel we ran over something because we had just gone through a construction zone a couple miles back.

We will probably never know what caused the failure(s) for sure, but 2 in a row the evidence strongly suggests you ran over something.  In any event, I just put 4 new hides on my travel trailer and went with the Goodyear Endurance.  Made in USA, price was decent, and so far in the 2000 miles I've put on them, they have performed well. 

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Goodyear&tireModel=Endurance

When you say they blew out, where was the damage? Tread, sidewall? How big was the hole, what shape?
Did you take photos? Did you or the tire tech examine them closely?

When the first tire blew, the weight and moment loading all went on the single tire on that side. More than likely, the steel and nylon belts in the tires suffered damage when that happened. When the belts get damaged, it's like opening a zipper as they all start to break no matter what you do.

Put on a set of LT tires and you won't have to worry about blowouts any longer.

4 year old trailer could mean 5 year old tires maybe?  That's getting right up there when people say it's time to change.

Was it right side?  Maybe those tires have taken a few curb kisses in their day?

I recently had a blowout on my MH.  My pressure alarm did nothing to warn me either.  pressure was dropping or spiking, neither was temp....and I was watching closely
  I was watching because i started to get a shimmy, but was on a stretch of road I didn't want to stop on so I slowed down and watched the TPMS like a hawk....and then just as I was slowing even more and turning into the off ramp....boom....... then beep beep beep....
  I figure the whole slow leak thing that the TPMS watches for, is just one of potentially many different failure modes.

Goodyear Marathon ST tires.  AKA China Bombs.  I had several of those fly apart before I got smart and switched to LT tires.

Any of the conjecture here could be on target. Or none of it.  We had a similar experience many years ago with our 5W and never reached any conclusion, but we also didn't bother to submit it to a tire engineer for analysis.

Trailer RV tires run at pretty their max capacity, so it doesn't take much to make a small problem into a "blow-out". Under those circumstances, a small puncture or cut can lead to a more catastrophic failure than it might if the tire was at maybe 50%-60% of capacity (as would be fairly typical of car tires). It also doesn't take long for what engineers call a run-soft failure, where the the pressure leaks down followed by a blowout. But your TPMS should have signaled that, even if only seconds before the failure.

Tires are also subject to delayed failures, e.g. you hit a pothole or curb days earlier that caused internal damage to the tire body/structure rather than visible cuts.  After some hours or days, one gives out. And that dramatically increases stress on the others, maybe pushing on of them over the edge as well.

Age-wise & mileage-wise, those tires were long in the tooth for a trailer tire.  Again, since they run at or very near their max capacity their entire working lives, they don't last as long as a tire that leads a less stressful life.  Maybe not a direct cause, but perhaps a contributing factor.

You state the pressure was "spot on", but didn't mention the what that "spot" is, or the tire size or loading (weight). Hard to make any judgements about that.

As 8muddypaws says, the GY Marathons of recent years seem to produce this sort of failures-without-warning. Maybe something in their design that is all or nothing, i.e. it runs fine up to the day it doesn't any more? Who knows...

I had a triple blowout a few years ago.  One tire blew, did minor damage to my fender skirt, then about 25 miles down the road, the other one on that side went.  Caused a lot more damage.  Then we were about 40 miles from home, and a third tire blew.  A 5 1/2 hour trip turned into a 14 hour ordeal.  And I had to go to work the next day.  I did all my checks and the tires were less than 4 years old, and around 3K miles.  I will maintain to all those that keep trying to blast people for not maintaining their stuff, that things do happen.  And especially with the quality of the tires put on most RV's.  I now have 4 Maxxis tires on my 5th wheel, and so far no issues.  Though I havent' traveled quite as much as I used to.

This reminds me of a time that I scuffed the sidewall tire on my Acura. I never thought too much about when it happened until a week later when I just happened to notice this bubble on the sidewall of the tire.  I never noticed any change in the tire performance and it did have built-in TMPS, but no warning there.  I felt lucky that I noticed this and had a chance to replace that tire before it would have blown.  This wasn't a particularly old tire.  I say this only to make the point that damaging the internal cords of the tire can happen easily and we may not pay it much attention, but can be a blowout ready to happen at any time.  Perhaps the construction site that the OP mentioned was the source of this damage.  The concept that a blowout can damage an adjacent tire is not something I thought about before, but those of us who have had blowouts that have done coach damage can readily accept this as a possibility, even beyond the additional load temporarily put on the mating tire

Goodyears Marathon ST tires have 138 tire complaint on NHTSA.gov website.

The marathons have been around for many years and were made in USA in the beginning. We worse issues back then before Goodyear came out with the Circle S redesigned series. Many lasted maybe 18 months or 3500 miles.

Goodyear has just released a new gen Endurance ST with a higher speed rating. The Marathons aren't produced anymore but thousands still in warehouses/on the road/etc.

Provider is another new gen L speed rated ST tire that has been around since the '11 era and has a good reliability record.

Carlisle came out with the new RH series in early '13 and was a much improved tire. Carlisle newest is The HD series with a M sped rating. Previous Carlisle tires looked like cheap wheel barrow tires but the new HD has that flat sidewall shape like a commercial grade LT tire.

Lots of options out here for a better quality tire all depending on your trailer gvwr/axle ratings and OEM tire size and load range. Don't bit into the sillyness some rv folks have and go with tires over 20 percent more capacity than axle ratings. Waste of tire.