busboytom wrote:Was driving back from "winter storage" and having a wonderful, uneventful trip when 160 miles hence and 5 miles from home sweet home, BAM! "That doesn't sound or feel right.... ". Blowout on right front tire!!!! Fewer than 5,000 miles on them. Huh? They are 8 years old but c'mon, man, seriously? Lesson learned, inspect those things before it's too late. Jack works like a champ and my honey saw her Super Hero on action! " Yup, I can fix it, watch this.....". Pictures to follow.
Ok, I'll share a similar, "kinda" humorous story. So, my GF's 23 YO daughter notices her 2000 Pontiac Grand am is SUDDENLY shaking/vibrating on her drive home from work. The next morning, instead of calling me or her Mom for an opinion, she drives it ON THE FREEWAY to a place to put air in the tire thinking "they might be low". Did she use an air gauge? Oh, hell no. She just pumped a bunch of ADDITIONAL air into the front tires.
So, the GF and I are cruising over to Bug-o-rama on a beautiful Sunday morning. The GF's phone rings and it's this daughter who tells her Mom what's going on. I can hear the conversation as the GF has her phone on speaker. I tell the GF "sounds like a separating tire". We ask where she is and she says she's on the freeway heading home. Not a second later, we hear the most horrific screaming we'd ever heard followed by silence. The GF and I look at each other, panic filling us both. Finally, after a minute, the daughter tells her Mom that the tire blew. She was crying pretty hysterically but she managed to pull off the freeway w/out incident.
The overinflated tire exploded with such force that it did about $4 grand worth of body damage to her car that is worth about $3 grand. It blew off pieces of her front plastic bumper cover. Her LF headlight assembly and it's plastic mounting bracket. All the inner fender lining plastic. The LF fender was bent beyond repair. Her lower body molding was broken in half. I priced out what just the parts would cost new and told the GF that her insurance would total the car, plus she has a $1k deductible.
We had it towed to a tire shop and they changed her tires that had easily 60% of the rubber remaining. The tires were only 5 years old but were a economy, no name brand. She then nursed it to my place and after about 18 hours of my free labor and $400 dollars in used parts from a salvage yard and $100 dollars in paint and materials, she was back on the road again.
Oh, she was also rewarded with a 15 minute conversation on how the whole thing could of been prevented had she simply pulled over or not drove the car again after she noticed the sudden vibration. I also educated her about tire gauges, why cars suddenly start shaking, tire balance, tire seperations, etc..
Speaking of seperating tires. I got in this 67 bug a year ago, pulled out of the garage and immediately felt a wobbly. I pulled right back into the garage. Looking the tires over, I saw this tire.. The age of the tire? The tires were 19 years old! I didn't realize they were that old..
When to replace tires based on calendar year age is such a hot button topic. My other bug's tires are probably 13 years old with a whopping 5k miles on them. They've always been inside the garage and show no visible signs of cracking. It's only a nice weekend driver for errands. I'm going to keep running them. My bus tires are 10 years old and are showing signs of cracking. I'm going to replace them even though they have 80% remaining..
Having collector/hobby cars is expensive when you don't drive them enough and the tires have to be changed based on calendar dates...
1970 Westfalia bus. Stock 1776 dual port type 1 engine. Restored German Solex 34-3. Restored 205Q distributor, restored to factory appearance engine.