well I blew a tire with my van hauling a heavily loaded trailer, then on the way home that night blew the spare about 5 miles from home with trailer empty. had to drive it the way it was. D'OH


went to take the initial blowout from the back of the van I notice a broken rear window! driving on the steel rim had loaded up the trailer with gravel and bounced one off the R rear door window. yeehaw! LOL


sure made a mess of the body behind the wheel. wife was kind of shocked how I didn't lose my cool at all, either time. 2nd time the kids were screaming, it was 10pm and they were all asleep in the 2nd row seat.


was an interesting Friday!


2 completely different tire failures, what are the chances? 1st tire was a yoko and took out the inside sidewall, no warning or noise or road debri just a big boom. spare was a tread separation and gave me lots of warning, enough to slow down some before it blew.


the wheel from the 1st blowout was inspected by the tire shop and looked fine so I got put one minty 90% tread 10 ply Michelin on it and will be changing the other side in the next week or two.
both rear tires were going to be replaced for this winter so............


not sure how I'll fix the wheel well and quarter panel that got torn up, maybe just fill it with urethane sprayfoam?

 

Glad everyone was okay, that there were no road mishaps due those blown tires.

Just goes to show we can't be too careful at any time while driving anything.

 

only problems were the screamin kids in the seat behind me.


luckily most of my driving is on secondary roads, these were actually on the same road but going in oppsosite directions and about 30 miles apart.
in heavy multilane traffic this could have been a lot more scary, all I had to do was slow the vehicle down and pull onto a gravel shoulder.


I was greatful for the heavy jack on the front of my trailer, it did most of the lifting. kind of glad I spec'd it so heavy when I ordered the trailer new in 1996. almost the size of the double ones on highway trailers I work on.


feeling pretty lucky nobody got hurt other than Barney's back end.

 

Was the tire that blew a 10ply? I'm guessing no?

These vans are heavy - when towing, gotta go E-rated (which typically is 10ply).

 

heavy is right! my van with my empty trailer , couple chains and binders, straps, tools etc. weighs in at 10,500lbs with me in the drivers seat. empty van with nothing in it except me is 7000lbs


I will never run anything but a 10ply > erange when hauling any trailer. 1st blow was a yohohama , spare was a Uniroyal> also a 10ply.
has a Michelin 10 ply on the aluminum rim from the first blow out now. hauled another trailer load on sunday on the new tire no problems, got a little nervous going past the same spot on the same road but all is good! keep my 10plys at 80psi when I am doing mostly trailer , and check them consistently> that's why the blow out shocked me.


my trailer has 1 8 ply tire on it and 3 10ply , but I run all the 4 tires at 65psi


thinking about doing some body work on the van now, back end is pretty rough. might just shorten the body and put a flatbed on it. as long as I have seating for 5 I can deal with it.


cheers to keeping an eye on your tires before you trailer haul, sometimes they give you no warning before they go.

 

Any idea how old the tires were? Just curious. I should go check mine. I know my spare is 18 years old (came with the van).

 

I think I'd go with 4 fresh tires.

 

As you know there is a date code on most tires still in service today. Three digits before year 2000, four digits after. The last digit(s) represent the year of manufacture.

Just replaced four that had good tread but, were 17 years old. Ten years is probably pushing it for radials especially in hot climates. Noticed the ride quality and even the steering effort (manual) improved noticeably. Old tires get hard and lose their wet and dry performance, even if they don't blow up.

 

Glad to hear you got it home.

Did you check your tire pressures recently? Most common cause of a blowout is being underinflated, and that gets compounded when you add in some tongue weight.

 

Being that the poster drives on gravel roads you can blow our a brand new tires it you happen to run over a sharp rock, etc. I had a similar blow out on the highway while towing my race car home from the track. The tread separated from the tires and flapped around before the tire blew out so I was able to slow down some before that happened. The tires were over 10 years old and I had planned on replacing them next year as this was the last race of that year.


I don't fear a rear blowout. I do if one of the front tires would go!

 

If loaded and/or towing I'd fear ANY blow out, front or rear. Rear tires can and do affect steering especially when one is losing pressure, slowly or all at once suddenly.

Honestly a front blow out tends to be a bit easier to maintain and control the van's forward motion, rears not so much.

Just my experiences mind you.

 

going by my recent experience, the loaded trailer blow out with no warning was pretty easy to handle, no stability issues at all.
I felt the empty trailer blow out a lot more and it actually seemed to push the back end of the van towards the shoulder of the road when it blew.


they were 2 completely different tire failures, so not sure how that would affect things.

 

That is a fact.

 

Yep---I think most of us learn that lesson pretty quickly on.

I see a ton of wrecks in NASCAR where a rear tire blows and next thing we see is *******s and teakettles flipping and flying through the air or into the outside walls---all from a rear tire going away.

And we see that same sort of body sheet metal damage too----rear blow outs ain't fun, that we know for sure!

 

I think I'd rather have a rear blowout when I'm on the bike rather than the front. Had it happen to me once already and I can't imagine surviving a front blowout doing 60+