Wrapping my head around front tire blowouts...

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MYRV2

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Sep 15, 2015
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It seems to come like a thief in the night..most the time no warnings... I recently put new tires on my coach... I check for pressure... I look for nails
but....you still could get a blow out...and IMO... the bigger the coach... the more drastic the results...

I'm gonna go on to admit....I'm guilty...I preach to my 3 sons... make room for mechanical failure... need to listen to my own advise... so here I am... at 65 yrs old... although I think I can still handle my self pretty good, fact is ... not near as strong, reaction time is way off..and I find my self being a lot more cautious...yeah... I have run down the road at 75mph... towing a trailer..so guilty here... in fact, I've done it at over 80 mph... blew a tire... drive side...unbelievable explosion..


but what I found to be the worst of the matter was the after math...the explosion went away quick......but the trying to keep and regain control of the rig was the worst part..mine happened on an up hill so mother nature was there to help.. I was in a 32' south wind with the p30 chassis..I think the independent chassis made it a better situation....
the law full way for suspension to be set up is the rim must be lower than the lowest part of the chassis..so you could actually drive on the rim...

but.... now lets add to the already horrible situation...30 to 40k rig... 11r and bigger tires..with an 11r tire the drop to the rim is 9''... the coach only has about 3-4'' suspension travel.. so you blow a tire..drop 9'' in the front corner...HO lee (what ever you wanna put here)... you are in for a ride of you life
 
so here's my thinking... the worst part of the blow out, aside from the damage caused from the tire damaging the coach... is the suspension drop...am I on the right track????
 
have you seen this video?
https://youtu.be/lkwOE1yKY5c

I'm curious your thoughts after watching it....
 
I have watched this video a few times, and luckily I watched it before we had a front tire blowout.  When the front tire blew on our first motorhome, a 29 foot class A, I did as the video said to do, and I quickly regained control, and was able to stop safely.  The logic and physics expressed in the video makes sense to me. 
 
blw2 said:
have you seen this video?
https://youtu.be/lkwOE1yKY5c

I'm curious your thoughts after watching it....

yes, I've seen it and you just reminded me to show it to my son, he has a 30' flair with the tall skinny 19.5 tires...thanks for posting..
 
Maybe it's just me, but has anyone else noticed that most of these front-wheel blowout events occur in diesel pushers?
 
I react slow - saved my bacon in some things, but haunts me in others.  I'm just not sure I can react fast enough to meet what that video implies.
 
The biggest danger on a front wheel blowout is usually the tendency to overreact, and oversteer.
Resisting that can save lives.

Also why sailing down the road with one hand on the wheel can be a bad idea.



 
Good logic, Sane principles. I for one am not going to "automatically" mat the throttle.  That decision comes after I feel the need to.
Maintain speed and throttle, regain control by steering and adjust speed as necessary. Abrupt movement of any kind can be a bad thing. Albeit matting the throttle at highway speed will not be abrupt.. Just not my go to, many miles under my belt in large straight trucks for a living. Have had many "experiences" doing so too. Smooth responses to any situation is better than any jerky one whether it be braking accelerating or steering.

As we age it is something we should ask ourselves, whether our reaction time is what it needs to be to be safe. We bought our RV when I had that very thing happen on 2 wheeled travel the way we used to do it. Semi in front of us peeled a super single off the trailer right in front of us two wheeled, two up, towing a trailer. pucker factor of 9+.  avoided the contact but re evaluated our chosen travelling method shortly there after and now we take the bike with us, ride the the less traveled roads, put it back in the trailer and head on home.

FWIW I'm 57 with more miles driving than I can even add up... Hopefully not done yet either.

 
I never was really aware of the blow out issue on our A class MH and now that I am it's a little nerve racking.  I guess it's like a plane crash :)  we have some kind of rings on our tires that hold the beads on the rim as I saw the key for them in the manual bag, but that is the only thing that may save our butts.
 
I don't want to belittle the possible effect of a blow-out, but this is largely another case of internet hysteria, another OMG! thing. "They" would have you believe your vehicle (large or small) will go instantly and totally out of control in any blowout situation. That's simply not the case in any but a tiny percentage of such events, and the sudden air loss events are relatively rare to begin with.

Tire engineers consider most such events to be a "sudden loss of air pressure" rather than an actual blowout (explosion of the tire body). Air loss is near-total and sudden, but the rubber mostly stays with  the wheel. These rarely cause a loss of control as long as the driver doesn't over-react (see LarsMac and Daffy comments). Basically just hang onto the steering wheel and don't panic-brake or swerve.
 
Gary RV_Wizard said:
Tire engineers consider most such events to be a "sudden loss of air pressure" rather than an actual blowout (explosion of the tire body). Air loss is near-total and sudden, but the rubber mostly stays with  the wheel. These rarely cause a loss of control as long as the driver doesn't over-react (see LarsMac and Daffy comments). Basically just hang onto the steering wheel and don't panic-brake or swerve.
I agree with this as well. Although not in a MH, I have had this happen twice in regular street vehicles, both on interstates at 70ish MPH. Once was a rear tire on an SUV that was shredded so bad it looked like flower petals, but I never came close to losing control. The other time was a RF on an F-250. There was not a safe place to pull off the road and I had to flop about 1/4 mile farther before pulling off, scattering tire bits all the way. Once again, I didn't come close to having control issues. Of course, the other traffic could easily see my plight and gave me a wide berth as well. In both instances the rim never contacted the pavement so I still had some level of control. YMMV, but mainly just keep your cool.
 
seems most of the pics where a tire had rapid  air loss, the windshield popped out... more of my concern is the front dropping 9'' all at once..  lots of twist going on there..
 
I've watched this a few times... looks like the driver ran off the road...and the wind shield popped out?????or did it pop out from the tow truck???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnpKmb-3CJo
 
I'm not gonna worry about a rappid air loss, but one thing for sure, I will never ever ever drive my coach again  at 80mph pulling a trailer....

guess i'm getting old.... what's the hurry....lol
 
You may find this story (on another RV site) interesting. I consider it one of the worse examples of a tire air  loss event, but you can form your own opinion about its severity and likelihood.

http://www.irv2.com/forums/f258/our-steer-tire-blowout-356257.html
 
I have experienced 2 blowouts on my last Class C RV.  Both were on rear dually inner tires.  While it was very loud and startling it did little to destabilize my driving. it made me wonder if I was lucky that it wasn't a front tire, or if rear blowouts are more likely.  I found it difficult to check tire pressure regularly with those dual tires, so I expect that I had overloaded one of these tires and at that time I also paid less attention to tire age.  Now I am in the process of adding tire pressure monitors and, with that, I plan to stop worrying about blowouts as I have done everything I can to minimize the risk.
 
Gary RV_Wizard said:
You may find this story (on another RV site) interesting. I consider it one of the worse examples of a tire air  loss event, but you can form your own opinion about its severity and likelihood.

http://www.irv2.com/forums/f258/our-steer-tire-blowout-356257.html

What is run flat technology and does it work on tires as large as those on a Class to prevent a blowout?
 
I think we have the Tyron run flat on ours, which may offer about a 20% reduction in risk in my opinion.  I say "I think", because the dealer tried to sell them to us (used unit), I refused, but found the lock key in the manual bag, so it either got them from the original owners purchase at that same dealer and the Dealer didn't know it, or the whole thing is a sales sham and they tried to stick it to both of us owners and they never did actually install them.  I'll find out when I get tires, but having the Tyron rings means I'll have to find someone with the tool to dismount the tire or buy the tool and then carry it with me later.

https://tyron.com/
 
Generally Unexpected blow outs can be predicted by an expert rather well

For example I had one (not entierly unexpected) a month or two ago... Rear (inner dual) But did it cause a problem? Well about... Not the kind we worry about, Just the $$$ kind and I had enough saved up as I was planing on replacing soon anyway.. Just had to do it a bit sooner than planned is all

So what happened when it blew (Sidewall failure)  NOTHING.. you got it NOTHING, I noticed it while working on something else and said "Dang that tire is flat" and it was.  I'm guessing it likely blew AFTER I left the road in the Moose parking lot (That way the max speed was single digit)

Now,,, Why was it not conpletly unexpected.. See "I was planing on replacement soon" They were a bit beyond design life  This is one cause of "Unexpected Blowout"

The other reasons are
Overload.. (Yes I run heavy right at the load limit)
Over or under pressure (Lost one car tire to OVER once.,,, but well long story It was really OVER TEMP Which drove the pressure up due to a brake system failure) (That was a front tire too)

Under pressure is the same as overload by the way,

And road hazards  ONLY road hazards are unpredictable
 
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