Traveling home today from Kerrville on I-10 Mother Nature called so we pulled rest area, I decided to get out and stretch my legs and do a walk around just to check on things after about 80 miles,,, something I do but not often enough. The first thing I noticed when I stepped outta the coach was a bubble on the sidewall on the curb side steer tire. My tires are 1 1/2 years old and have less than 6000 miles on them. Remembering a friend had told me of a tire store in Sealy Texas about 125 miles away that carried the uniroyal R20 Tire's I had, I called him to get the name and number... and called them to let them know I was on the way. Well as my luck would have it they were out of the uniroyals till tomorrow or Saturday so I had to get a different tire, 2 of them, toyos.. in and out pretty quick. Had the balancing beads put in... the bubble was noticeably larger when I got to the tire store 125 mile up the road, Got a little money back for the second tire that was still good to help soften the blow when it was time to settle up.. so gotta give a 2 thumbs up to Brown tire center ....... guy at the tire place said it wouldn't have gone much farther.. the pic of the 2 cuts on the inside is me pushing on it from the outside.....
Lesson learned here is to make it a point to stop more often and stretch my legs doing a walk around
Love my Toyo's, have them all around...........Good job on the save
Chris
Did he happen to say what he thought caused the rupture?........I like my Toyos also.
He had no idea since there were no marks like I had curbed it.. it looked like new
Thanks for the heads up! I'll keep a close eye on our RS20 tires, which are only a little "younger" than yours. So far they have performed flawlessly, and we have been pleased with our choice.
Mine had been great until today, glad they made the 125 miles to the tire store.. I was nervous an a cat on a hot tin roof...
Good eye Keith!
Scary.
Any idea why it failed?
Good reason to always buy a Drumstick and slowly wander around your stuff. Good catch.
Not to stir up a nest of something, but I have to ask.
What made you decide to continue driving on that?
Were it me, I would have called for roadside assistance.
Rare failure. My understanding is that all these kind of tires are individually tested at double pressure under overload loads at way over the rated speed.
My thoughts also, I've had blowout on SOB on rear and it took 2 weeks to put back together, with front there is a good chance of
wrecking the coach! I'm just not that brave!
my 2c worth
Chris
Just to make myself feel better, I'd sure send this pic to Uniroyal with the age & mileage. I'd say it was a factory defect. Yes, you're prolly out of warranty, but if that's a bad batch, other owners should be warned.
Stupidity and when I started out thought I would be able to buy one to replace the uniroyal I had which a lot of people don't carry and the place I was going carried them. Unfortunately they were out until Friday or Saturday so I ended up having to buy 2 anyway. The knot wasn't that big when I first saw it And I didn't think it was as bad as it ended up being. Got lucky and probably wouldn't do it again, it definitely was not a comfortable 125 mile ride for sure.
I called Herman Power tire in Nac this am about it, I'm gonna take it back to them next week for the Michelin rep to look at and hopefully get an adjustment for it. It has less than 5000 miles on it
Carrying a spare tire solves most all the problems. If you don't want to change it, road service will. I don't move the coach without the spare in the compartment. Also, a good reason for 295/75s. Everyone carries this size. Nothing wrong with mixing rear tires either. Three out of our four are different brands.
Pierce
Where do you store your spare? When we got ours, there was a spare on the roof with a canvas cover.. I took it off when I resealed the roof and the spare was rotten and beyond use!
In our 36 foot U300, our mounted spare is just inside the driver's side compartment. It's the only storage compartment on our coach. Lots of storage down inside the tire so not all lost. As you slide the wheel out, it drops down on one side making it easy to rotate to the upright position to move into position. Our air jack is stored inside a kitty litter container. An air reel brings coach air to any one of the corners. Even if you don't change it yourself, it makes it easy for road service to change.
To those who depend on their cell phone to bail them out, even with Verizon, most of the places we go don't have reception.
Pierce
It only takes one pothole....
Keith
Mike, I would even add further to say that Uniroyal may offer to pay in full for the replacement or most of it. I know when we blew a Goodyear H rated on our fiver, they came through big time! Can't say enough about their service at the time! We were issued a check well over 3 quarters of what the new tire cost us and this tire had a date code of 0912 and this happened last November.
Air jack sounds like a great idea; what brand do you have?
Mike,
The air jack comes from Harbor Freight and costs about $90 to $120 but is frequently on sale for much less. It works with air or you can use it manually. I purchased a couple. It really needs a plate from the jack to the frame of the coach in the two possible places you might want to place the jack. It puffs (for lack of a better word) a couple times a second and will raise it in twenty or thirty seconds. Nice hand control. The adapter I made is really necessary to not only safely lift the coach without the jack coming off but also to spread the load a little on the frame. I purchased a reel for air but the HF hose is terrible so I replaced it after this photo was taken. A vise grip holds the rear jack plate in place only to locate it before using the jack. If I have a tough lug nut, I use the air tank along with a very short large diameter air hose for max pressure at my big gun (can't see it in photo). I made the adjustable safety tools so I would not lose an arm or worse.
Here is the air jack link. I bought the 20 ton but the 12 ton should do the trick: Search results for: 'air jacks' (https://www.harborfreight.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?dir=asc&order=EAScore%2Cf%2CEAFeatured+Weight%2Cf%2CSale+Rank%2Cf&q=air+jacks)
Pierce
If you had a puncture you did not see air can then get in between the belt layers and separate them causing the bubble. Then blowout. Pretrip and posttrip inspection
A sweet set set-up! Thanks, Pierce. ^.^d
—FOLLOW UP—
Took the tire to Herman Power Tire in nac, By chance the Michelin rep was there, talked to him personally.. He as I expected had an excuse for this and an answer for that but finally admitted a defect was possible and would give me an adjustment. He didn't say how much, but he would credit the tire shop and they would send me a check.. waiting on that now! So my hats off to Herman Power tire and the Michelin rep....
Keith
I suspect the tire was damaged from high speed impact. Road hazard claim.
What was the final outcome?