I was chugging along last week in and heard a pop/crash that I initially thought was booze clanking around in the freezer during a lane change. No change in ride, instability or anything. I was going 65-70mph.
I wasn't too far from a rest stop, so I pulled over the next one and took care of business. Walking back to the RV, I did a quick walk around and noticed the left rear tire was looking low and my dual dyanamics read off the low scale. "Hmm, the tire must be low" I thuoght. I recall hitting something in ATL the night before in the road, so maybe I had a slow leak.
Well, I look at the inner tire and it's soft and off the rim!
I call coachnet and they send somebody out to change the tire. I had an unmounted spare in the storage compartment. A decent casing I picked up a while ago just for this situation. 1300 miles later and it's still doing fine. I'll probably put the front tires on the left rear and then put two new front tires on. Tires are all 2010.
Hole was on inside of the inner driver-side dual.
You're lucky I'd say!
Frozen Margaritas?
Same thing happened to us coming back from California. Same inner dual and for the love of me I don't really know when it blew! I assumed that a tire blowing out like that would rock the entire coach. I found it after we got in and got stuck in the snow 10 ft from the storage facility. We had to drive thru a couple of towns with ice and snow piled up (West Texas is not well known for snow removal) and maybe chugging through the ice craters did it?? Glad it worked out well for both of us with no real damage except for the pocket book.
Pressure Pro tire monitoring . . .
How about one does not hear a pop/crash and keeps on driving? Same thing on a tow car could cause major damage.
Yes Barry, that has stuck in my mind since that happened and a TPMS looms in the future.
I didn't have a tow car. I felt no change in driving behavior. I pulled over at the next safest spot.
Pulling over on the side of an interstate is extremely dangerous and should only be done if on is immobile. Many deaths occur each year because of this.
Krush- glad you are safe- that is #1.
You said the tires are 2010-so they are 6 years old ish.........
What pressure do you run in your tires? I run 105 in front and 100 in rears on my U270.
I have a friend who pulled into FT in Jan last year after an inner dual blow out and it took out his eyebrow so fiberglass work too. Glad you are ok.
I run 100PSI all the way around. Just makes life simpler. I'm plenty high for the weight. I think 90 front and 85 rear might be fine, but I just like keeping it 100.
I may have had a leak, and lower pressure caused the blow out, but I doubt it Not with a hole in the sidewall like that. Most likely damage from a pothole or something similar. But we'll never know for sure.
A TPMS may have caught it if the blowout was due to low pressure. But, I really don't think it was. The rest of the tire looked fine. Everything looked great except for the grapefruit sized hole in the sidewall!
We fill tires to 100 psi all around. I do look at Pressure Pro individual reading when passing by the dash, but are not one to keep them at 100 psi. Over time, weather temperature & altitude changes tires may get to near 90 psi before I refill them up.
We find that 100 psi is more than needed for our weight, and the extra gives us a safety margin and time between getting out the compressor.
The in coach air chuck if you are so equipped has "dry" air for your tires. Less chance of rust in the cord belts IMO.
How far did you drive to the rest area? Anything more than a mile at speed would make the failed tire's mate very suspect.
To follow up, I just replaced all 6 tires with new Toyo M177 on my RV. I ran this outside "overloaded" tire for another 10-15,000 miles with no issues.
2.5 years later after the blowout in the first post of this thread, the other inside dual (passenger side) had a sidewall blowout as well under nearly identical circumstances.
John Haygarth knew of a guy in Mexico that had a rear flat, took it off and drove across Mexico and back to the states with one rear tire on one side.
I bought an ex-Greyhound in Fall River, MA and after a day driving west, I got a vibration. Checked the tires with a stick but they seemed OK. I finally figured out that the RR inside was flat. Drove no more than 55 across a couple of states to Columbus, OH where I bought another one. When I got home, I found the front bumper folded down and a new Michelin was just sitting there.
Pierce
Over my 50 year stretch with semis there have been times that for one reason or another I would "single out" one of the dual wheels and have had to do it when loaded until a replacement could be had. Have gone several hundred miles that way. Of course if loaded would keep speed down to 50 or so.. If empty would go cross country until I could get home. Goes without saying it's not the best of situations but back then and now you do what you have to do.Running empty you could run normal speed which in the 70's was pretty darn quick for my bunch.
I had a blow out on a trailer.. pulled over as far as possible.. Semi truck driver fell asleep and hit us doing 70mph... No one else pulled over for 20 miles in any direction... be VERY carefull when on the side of the road... Neck/bakc surgery... knees cleaned and still recouping 4.5 years.. still hurt
Be careful. Driving miles with an overloaded single can cause internal damage which will only appear later, maybe when you least expect it. When I had an inside dual failure, I called James Triana. He recommended driving no more than 10 mph to the nearest exit and call road service. The next exit had a tire repair shop!
There is no sensible argument with what you say Brett and that is the thing to do IF it is one of your options.
Krush, all I can say is you were very fortunate, if the steel belt has shucked you would have had major fiberglass repair,
ask me how I know, last coach SOB took me 2 weeks to repair. Also, I pulled over as soon as I heard the pop.
Chris
That may be the coach I bought in Tucson. It had a fairly disastrous blowout in Mexico, ended up in a gully with fiberglass damage. The seller described it to me. "It sounded like the end of the world. Ended up getting the coach winched out of the gully then I had the outside rear put on the front. It drove just fine, 600 miles to Tucson. I ran 70 mph."
I bought the coach then limped it to the tire store and purchased new tires. When I asked about some tire credit for the five pull offs the manager said, "sure, let me take a look." He came back laughing and said man, I'm going to charge you to take those tires. They're 12 years old.
Chuck,
Now I remember and yes, that's the same coach. Crazy as lots of 295/75s are made in Mexico. Why would you do that?
Pierce