WARNING New Clincher Tire Blows Off Rim!!

[SurfCityGene]

Many have said and I agree "I'd rather be Lucky than Good!" Well I had a very scary thing happen to me today and I'm darn glad I was the Lucky one!!

Now this was not my first time playing around clincher tires. Many of you know I've had my '12 Torpedo for more years than I can remember and it runs 30X3 and 30X31/2 non demountables and I normally drive more than average miles so I've had my share of flat tires and replaced my tires on that car a few times. Helped some T guys change their tires and a few others.

Today, I was working on an very original looking '25 picup with demountable rims for a friend. The T had some really bad tires so I purchased NEW tubes and a NEW 30 X 3 1/2 Wards Riverside tire. I had the rims off, cleaned the rust and painted the inside. I inserted the tube in the new tire and mounted it on the rim. My method is to mount both ribs over the rim from the back side with my small motorcycle tire irons and a dash of soapy water makes this job pretty easy. When the tire is on the rim and deflated I bounce it all around to even everything out then inflate it to about 60 PSI to seat the beads then deflate it again filling it one more time to about 60 PSI.

With this one done I laid it down on the driveway a short distance from me and started on the next tire. After several minutes passed I was Startled by a LOUD BOOOM!! Then after what seemed like awhile, What the Heck!!, I heard a Loud Bang and it was the RIM Landing a few feet away from me!!! Of course about then I realized what happened seeing the tube in shreds and when my wife came running out of the house I realized how Lucky I Was!

Trying to figure out why this happened I looked at the beads of the new tire, the rim, and checked my pressure gauge and every thing looked normal??

Much later I got another new tube and remounted that tire and installed it back on the car went for a test drive and will wait for a loud Bang and a hole in my roof??
Has anyone else experienced the same mishap. Reminded me of the Widow Maker split rims from the 50's.. Thank God for some Luck today!!

[FreighTer Jim]

It would suck if something bad happened to you Gene - glad you are ok...


FJ

[ewdysar]

Hi Gene,

I’m glad to hear that you’re ok. That whole thing could have gone much worse.

I recently had something similar happen with a new bicycle, with less dramatic results. I had just finished assembling the bicycle and added air to the tires after the wheels were installed. I aired the back tire using a manual tire pump and moved on to the front tire. Just before I got the front tire up to 50psi, I heard a noise at the back and looked to see the tube bulging into the chain stay where a section of the tire had come unseated. Less than a second later, the tube blew, throwing the rest of the tire off the rim, but with the back of the bike all around the explosion, nothing got away. A few seconds passed and before my eyes, the front bead started to slip off the rim. I flipped the valve lever on the pump hose and the pressure passed fast enough to save the front tube.

I don’t know if the rims or the tires are just cheap Chinese junk that are barely in spec or what, but I have found that airing them 5 pounds at a time, and feeling around the rim to make sure the tire is firmly seated has kept the original front tube and the replacement rear tube intact for my occasional ride to the market.

That said, back in the 50’s, a friend of the family was filling a spare tire after replacing a flat on his modern sedan, and was hit by debris when the tire exploded. The subsequent giant bruise on his inner thigh became septic, and the harsh medical treatments of the day shut down his kidneys while in the hospital treating the infection. He died within days. My father told me this story more than once as I grew up. To this day, I stand off to one side and turn my body away while filling anything to high pressure and rarely look at pressure gauges straight on.

Again, congrats on thwarting death or injury. Strange things happen all the time. It’s a wonder that any of us get to grow old at all....

Keep crankin’
Eric

[Allan]

Gene, I don't know if this is of any help, but I have always used proper tyre mounting lubricant when fitting tyres. It dries out quickly, unlike many of the soapy solutions some use. I suspect there was something else going on in your case, but possibly a rather too slippery lubricant may have played a part. It couldn't possibly be a fault in those wonderful quality tyres we are offered these days, could it?

Allan from down under.

[Steve Jelf]

Gene, what brand was the tube?

[SurfCityGene]

Here's what I found after some research and thinking about my safety procedures. Of course there is an OSHA regulation and some good info there.

The tube was a new Custom Classic made in India for size tires from 30 X 3, 30 X 3 1/2 and 31 X 4. These feel very heavy and look very well made. I've used these in the past with no issues and they feel the same as made in USA tubes. I couldn't fault the tube in this case. When the tire slips off the rim bead while inflated any tube will fail.

While I did use some handy dish soap mixed with lots of water which could have been a contributing factor but in the hot weather the lube was drying too fast to do much good. One thing comes to mind as a possible cause or factor. After inflating to set the bead ,releasing the air and reinflating again to 60PSI. I laid or let the tire fall down flat on the cement. Today was a pretty hot day here in SoCal and the sun had been shinning on the concrete and was hot to the touch. I believe a combination of a hot tire, the possible moist soap residue and the heat from the hot concrete then after several minutes heated the tire increasing the pressure till the bead slipped off the rim. I can't explain how violent this was but it really was quite a while before that rim fell back to earth!!

My, and I hope your, learning experience from this will be:

1. Do not inflate clincher tires to 60psi. I really believe 50 is adequate, maybe 55 cool.
2. Do not inflate any tires while laying flat on any surface without it being somehow secured. This normally means top off the tire pressure only AFTER the tire is mounted on the car.
3. Use a clamp-on air chuck with a long hose and a gage or regulator so you can keep your arms and body clear while inflating. The working range of the pressure gage should be close to the middle. Accuracy degrades a lot at the top and bottom of the scale (30%). So for T's you should have a 100 or 120 psi gage.
4. I do have some proper tire lube from BF Goodrich when I worked at the mfg plant but it's up in the cabinet in the shop behind all the paint cans....
5. Tell others about the danger while inflating tires or any pressure container and How to Do It safer. For some scary watching go online to see guys getting killed and seriously injured inflating tires!

I'm Thanking God that I didn't get killed or injured today doing a favor for a fellow Model T friend. Maybe that's Why??

[John Codman]

Any response to the OP will be just a guess, but I doubt that the tube was the cause. As was said earlier, any tube will fail if the tire slips off the rim when inflated. The issue has to be with either the rim or the tire bead. If you are positive that the rim is in good shape and reasonably clean (I did see where you said that you cleaned and painted the rim), the issue is almost certainly the bead. Either the tire was not positioned correctly, or it's a piece of crap. I have never mounted a clincher tire, but worked in a tire store for 10 years and have mounted literally hundreds (likely more then a thousand) truck tires on two, three, and single-piece rims. I have had a couple that I refused to mount due to the condition of the rim, but have never had one come apart during inflation. We always - repeat - always inflated the tires in a steel cage. Except once. Fortunately I wasn't mounting the tire, but it was nearly lunchtime and another person was doing the mount, This wheel used a big snap ring which came unseated. The building had a 16 foot ceiling, and the ring embedded itself in one of the beams. We always inflated truck wheels with a long-hosed clamp-on air chuck, so the only damage was that it became a two-piece hose. If the person who was mounting the tire had had any part of his body over the ring, that piece would have been removed from what was left of the guy. He never had to be told to use the cage again.

[Charlie B in N.J.]

In Korea years back, (about 50. Kunsan AFB), 2 guys working on a truck tire, which was laying on the ground instead of in the tire cage where it belonged, blew off the rim. Probably the lock ring wasn't set correctly. They were leaning over the tire when it went off. One guy lost both hands and the other was nearly cut in half. The ring buried itself in the ceiling 15 feet above. A few years earlier a father and son were killed at our gas station in Brooklyn over inflating a tire that blew and went off like a bomb. Man you just never know.

[Jeff Hood]

Couple of thoughts:

A tube properly inside a tire generally doesn't fail unless pinched, cut, or punctured. The tire and rim contain the tube and allow the high PSI. An unconfined tube just continues to expand until it is stretched so thin that it fails. Depending on how heavy the rubber is, it may pop or explode, but often just tears with a whoosh. As kids we often grossly overinflated truck tubes for snow and water play and even when inflated to diameters approaching five feet, only showed 5 or 6 PSI on a gauge.

Since you remounted the tire again, it appears that the tire was OK, and not at fault.

Once a "clincher" tire bead is properly and fully tucked into the rim, the pressure in the tube should be only making the bead seat even tighter to the rim.

You don't mention using a "flap" (begin arguing their use and merits now) but a flap keeps the tube fully inside the tire and protected. I am wondering if some of your tube was pinched under the bead but not cut due to the extra thickness of the tube that you mentioned. The tube may have kept the bead from fully seating, and under inflation pressure actually lifted the bead of the tire out of the groove in the rim.

[Steve Jelf]

The tube was a new Custom Classic made in India for size tires from 30 X 3, 30 X 3 1/2 and 31 X 4.

That's what I suspected, and why I asked. There was a run of Custom Classics that apparently got folded and packaged before they were fully cured, and have a tendency to split along the folds. I can't verify the cause, but I can attest to the results. I couldn't understand how I kept pinching the tube I was mounting. It was when I was applying the seventh patch that I discovered I hadn't been pinching the tube at all. It was splitting where it had been folded. I'll be using Hartfords or EEC tubes until I'm pretty sure there are no more of the splitting Custom Classics in the supply chain.

[SurfCityGene]

This was the 10th Custom Classic tube that I have mounted in a tire this year and all with no problems. Of course the ones we have here locally could very well be from a different batch. I can't accept the tube as being a cause but I could see the possibility, however remote, of Jeff's idea. I feel this was remote because I always slightly inflate the tube and when barring both ribs into the rim together the tube would be very visible and something I always watch out for.

It's pretty obvious on some tires if they're centered/seated properly when they have that tiny rim around the tire. That's the reason I always inflate and deflate the tire and use a dead blow hammer around the outside several times to make sure it is properly seated.

I took some measurements of the depth of the groove/bead on several old tires:
Excelsior 30x31/2 marked max load 896lbs @ 65PSI!! depth was 0.310"
The Sampson Tire was 0.300"
T Driver measured 0.250"
Firestone nonskid 30x3 were 0.285 and 0.260"

I am very positive that the rim was not a fault since they were all in good original condition and the rust I removed was some minor cleanup inside the groove and the rim center. There was no repair of pitting on the outer edge of the clincher.

Had lots of time last night to reflect on how fortunate I was!!

A very good practice for those with demountable clincher tires requiring higher pressures is to never inflate the tire when it is not bolted securely to the car and always use a clamp-on air chuck.

Keep yourself clear! I measured the distance that rim traveled from where it exploded to where the rim landed.... EIGHTEEN FEET!!! No telling how high it got.....

[mngreen]

Wow Gene!

I keep thinking about how you and I were mounting my new Excelsior tires a while ago!

What was the condition of the tire after the boom? Was it shredded or intact?

[Susanne]

in the late 70's, I worked in a truck shop that had a welded heavy steel pipe tire cage that had bowed out sides from rings that cut loose. Back then we still had split ring rims... ALL new employees got rotated through tire changes when they first started (maybe to lose fear of the things), and more than one of us got to "ring the bell" as the boss called it. And those of us who had that honor not only had to remount a new tire and tube in the failed repair (unless the rim was damaged) but do it right after the thing came apart.

Kind of like getting back on the horse who throws you into a barbed wire fence. But it worked - once you were in the shop wen that happened, most everyone never tried to shortcut the system again.

[SurfCityGene]

Mike, Yes, I thought about your tires after that.

I inspected the tire and remounted it back on the rim and the car. Drove it today and all is good at 55PSI.

I did have flash back thoughts when standing next to it though..

[Original Smith]

How could anyone make a tube to fit a 23" and a 24" rime at the same time. Not a good idea in my book. That maybe your problem.

[Scott_Conger]

A salient point Charlie and I think others have made is to never lay the tire down. I was researching tire cages for my uncle who is a volunteer at the Forney Museum in Denver. I saw a number of videos taken with tires intentionally blown up, in cages, laying down and standing up.

The damage to the cages when laid down was devastating and shudder to think what a body would do if hit with such force. Standing up, the explosion was dramatic but uneventful.

I had a tire explode once...very old and rock hard...was a spare on a newly purchased roadster. The tire exploded with my face close enough that sidewall on the oposite side hit the car and ricocheted, then hit me in the forehead and left a big welt. I was stunned and had hearing loss for over a day. It certainly is no fun. I am sure that has added just a little bit to my tinitus.

Gene, I'm certainly glad you are OK!!

[KirkieP]

Gene
I so glad you are OK.