Had a blowout Friday morning
 

Happened on 78 East in Newark, just before the 1&9 exit, prior to the Turnpike tolls. Driver's side rear. I hadn't pulled over for 45 seconds before there was a State Trooper behind me in the shoulder.

I'm just glad it went before I got into the Lincoln Tunnel. That would have been very very bad.

http://forums.carmudgeons.com/attach...tachmentid=153

http://forums.carmudgeons.com/attach...tachmentid=154

Whoa. Any idea what caused this? Were your pressures OK?


Did your wheel get damaged?

maybe some Armorall would have saved that tire?? :D


seriously, if that damage had started on the outside, you might have seen it before it failed

Or not...looks very similar to the tire on my wife's car after it went a couple weeks ago, minus the big hole. Although you can't see it quite as well in this pic, our tire has the same kind of separation on both the inner and outer facing sides.

http://teamwtf.org/gallery/albums/al...ewall_hole.jpg

If you had been driving an Ford Exploder, you'd've found yourself belly-up in the ditch.

What kind of tires are those? Based on the tread, they look like S-03's (or similar). I'm surprised to seem it split the way it did. You can certainly see where the weakest point in that tire is.

No, it was driver incompetence that flipped all those exploders.

That tire looks like it was driven for quite a while with too little pressure, though.

That, coupled with the most easily upset + soft + bouncy suspension anywhere on the planet.

My pressures were okay as recently as the previous Sunday, I know for sure.

I actually noticed just the slightest wiggle on the onramp when I was getting on 78 about 10 miles earlier. I made a mental note to check my pressures, but it didn't feel like a flat tire at all... just the tiniest bit "squishy" around the turn.

Then it finally gave up suddenly in Newark complete with show... violent shuddering, smoking rubber. The wheel was very hot.

It looks like there may have been a puncture from a nail or something, but I can't tell for sure... in the 1st pic, you can see a hole in the tread that could correspond with the hole in the sidewall. The outer sidewall is intact.

There's no visible damage to the wheel, but it will have to be checked out, I guess. If they have trouble balancing it when mounting the new tire? :dunno:

Affirmative.

C&D ran a test a few years ago in the midst of the Exploder fiasco. They essentially rigged a tire to completely deflate on command and sent a brave report down a dragstrip. The result was that the Ford remained tractable and controllable after the "blowout," even at high speeds with both hands off the steering wheel. They concluded that blowout-related rollovers were most likely the result of panicked drivers, not an inherent design flaw in the car. Of course, that doesn't recuse Ford from recommending tire pressures too low to properly support the vehicle.