News, Tires Can Explode While Being Refilled if Not Maintained (low profile tire, truck)
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The next time your tire goes flat, you might want to proceed with caution if you're filling it with air. It’s a rare occurrence, but under certain circumstances, a car tire can suddenly explode, leading to devastating consequences. Every year, dozens of people are seriously injured, or in some instances, killed, while filling their tires with air. Adam Sproul, 28, suffered a traumatic brain injury and his friend was killed when they were putting air in a tire at a New Hampshire repair shop.
Car tires are one thing but a semi tire is something very serious when they explode. Semi tires are inflated to 100 psi and when they go they are like bombs. I was standing about 100 feet away when a semi tire blew up and it was so intense that my internal organs felt it before I heard it.
Car tires are one thing but a semi tire is something very serious when they explode. Semi tires are inflated to 100 psi and when they go they are like bombs. I was standing about 100 feet away when a semi tire blew up and it was so intense that my internal organs felt it before I heard it.
I remember split rim tires on semi trucks my brothers old Dodge cab over semi had them. They took sludge hammers and steel flat bars to change the tires, very physical to change them and mount them back in the day.
My wife saw that report and went insane, as she knows that I'm checking tire pressures and adjusting them regularly, as the outside temps cycle through the different seasons. She assumed that the video was an accurate assessment of a normal situation, and afraid I might get hurt. (despite my experience with tires going back to the late 1960s)
While I agree that running a tire with exceptionally low pressure COULD indeed damage the integrity of the sidewall, that video used two extremes to demonstrate what they considered dangerous. In the first scenario, they showed a VERY low profile tire, which had very little sidewall height, which A) makes it difficult to visually observe a low pressure condition; and B) with such little sidewall to work with, it will accentuate the possibility of damage due to driving with low pressure.
HOWEVER, under NORMAL circumstances, a passenger car tire would/should never contain more than a 35-45 PSI pressure level. I highly doubt that even a sidewall blowout, at that pressure level, would "blow back" a human being, as was shown in the video.
What the commentator seemed to either gloss over, or didn't know, was that in the example of the seriously big "explosions", there were dealing with heavy truck tires, and as poster "Garther" mentioned in a previous post, those tires are NORMALLY inflated to the 100 PSI range, so A) they're an entirely different story, and B) something 99% of the population never deals with. So showing one of them blow up, for reasons unspecified, is simply a demonstration of tabloid news's usual sensationalism.
And FWIW, the "tire cage" is used, NORMALLY, when dealing with commercial truck tires. And furthermore, in their demonstration of the cage, with the passenger car tire, I'd be willing to wager that they inflated it to at least 100 PSI. AND when being contained within the cage, I highly doubt the exploding tire would "blow back" a reasonably sized human. After all, the cage is containing the tire, all that's "moving" in that scenario, is air. Now, your ear drums, might be another story.
If there a REAL point of information to be gained from that video, and one that they DIDN'T mention, is when you're inflating your tires, use a pressure gauge. And DON'T trust the one that some of the "convenience store inflators" have, as a built-in device.
I agree with leadfoot4. Not a danger if done properly, and even if not done properly I've never seen a passenger car tire blow with that much force.
I have seen metal bead lock rings blow when in the military working around larger trucks. They can kill you if there's enough pressure behind them. Just knocking them on with sledge hammers is dangerous.
This is not news any more than it's news when balloons pop if overinflated. The pneumatic tire was patented in 1845; I would believe some probably burst before that while being developed.
Is there an adult alive today who really doesn't think this is a possibility?
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