Tire Horror Storries??? I've had my 1st!

[TheBeachHous]

So as some of you know, we just purchased our 1999 SeaView about a month ago, and have been cleaning and adding our personal touches every weekend, and sometimes that involves taking it out and about. We knew buying an RV in the late fall would prevent us from using it, but we got such a great deal, we couldn't pass it up.
Anyway, long story longer, when we purchased The Beach House, we knew it needed tires. The sidewalls on the rear were all weather checked, but the tread was good. Needless to say, spending another $3k on tires right before christmas wasn't going to happen, and we figured we'd tackle it with Tax Refund money or something, no big deal.
Well, we were having the generator looked at on saturday about 40 miles from the house, and on our trip back I hopped on the highway and set the cruise control and off we went.
We heard a noise coming from the back but didn't pay any mind to it, it was just 1 little thud, like something fell in the closet... Well this little thud turned out to be the outer rubber on the tire, it flung off and shot across the highway, then the tire blew...
Luckily, I am a stellar driver and I was able to get off the highway far enough to be able to get out and be safe on the shoulder... I saw in my rearview mirror the fender skirt flapping in the wind and the bottom of the awning arm dangling loose... I didn't want to get out and survey the rest of the damage, i was so afraid of the carnage i'd see...
I've seen it before, and it can be nasty!!!
I got out and sure enough the outside dual had blown up and it was in shreds, but there wasn't anything damaged... The fender skirt lost two screws which caused it to flap out (like how the bay doors open 'naturally') and saved that piece of plastic... The only broken part was the clearance light cover on the skirt and it was cracked... The mud flap on the inside of the wheel well saved the compartment behind it...
I was so relieved to see that there was "no" damage, I didn't mind changing that 19.5"tire (once we found all the tools to do it with...) and we were able to laugh at ourselves a little bit...
BTW - Using the leveling jacks as a method of jacking may be the WRONG thing to do, but when traffic is wizzing by at 80mph something had to stabilize the rig and we didn't have a jack in it... So SHHHHH DON'T TELL!!! but we used the levelers to change the tire...

Anyway folks, My story could have ended a lot worse then it did, but i think we had someone watching over us.

It taught us a valuable lesson, don't drive on questionable tires!!!

[Clifftall]

Sorry for your troubles , but it's like the old Fram oil filter commercial. PAY ME NOW OR PAY ME LATER. The next blowout could be hazardous to the health of your family. Please do the right thing with those tires.

[2Labs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheBeachHous We heard a noise coming from the back but didn't pay any mind to it, it was just 1 little thud, like something fell in the closet...

I have a post on our Blog that I started - but haven't finished/published yet, but it is about listening to the noises your motorhome makes, and paying attention to anything that sounds out of the ordinary.

On one of our trips this past summer, we were travelling on RT 84 through NY State and I started to hear some unusual rattles below me. I thought at first that it might be some things that were packed loosely in the compartment that's under the driver. The rattleing would come and go a little bit, but was rather persistent. It was raining pretty heavily and I did not want to pull over to the side of the road where we were. As luck would have it, we came upon a highway service area and I pulled in.

I hopped out and started doing a walkaround. I checked the compartments - nothing was loose or moving around, looked around the MH and then peeked up inside the wheel wells and BAM there it was! There was a bracket that was screwed at an angle from the front "bumper" area to the side of the front fender. It was rusted and had broken loose from the bumper side. So now it was bouncing up and down in the wheel well and from all appearances off of the tire as well.

At this point, we had only owned the MH for about 6 weeks, but had done about 1,5000 miles of travel by that time and I just knew this was a sound I had not heard before. Had I not stopped to diagnose this, we very likely would have had a sliced and blown out drivers front side tire!

So now here I am in the rain, oops HEAVY rain, stopped in the service area entrance - behind 1/2 dozen or so 18 wheelers, with cars coming up the entrance beside us. I broke out the toolbox, some orange cones and found some tools that I could use to remove this broken metal bracket.





So my lesson from our experience is to *ALWAYS* listen to what your motorhome is telling you. If it's a noise you have not heard before, or does not sound right - pull over and investigate.

[Mr_D]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheBeachHous BTW - Using the leveling jacks as a method of jacking may be the WRONG thing to do, but when traffic is wizzing by at 80mph something had to stabilize the rig and we didn't have a jack in it... So SHHHHH DON'T TELL!!! but we used the levelers to change the tire...

We have HWH jacks, each of the four rams are rated for 12,000#'s so they'll easily support the weight of the rig. HWH says there is no problem using them as a tire changing jack. In fact they say you can suspend the entire rig off the ground for long periods. BUT that leaves the unit subject to coming off the jacks if all four of the rear tires come off the ground. So I only leave the front axle off the ground for 6 months at a time.

[Benny367]

I know 2 people that have had blow outs on their RV's:
My Father blew a tire on his old Pace Arrow- $3500.00 in damage! (the tire tread whipping around the wheel well put a hole in the floor and ripped out all of the electrical wires for the genset !)

And my neighbor who has a 5 year old 32'Thor Hurricane had $6000.00 in damage!!!! With tires that were only 5 years old!

So, needless to say you were lucky!
Park it until you have the money for new tires.

[tbussche]

We had my first blowout this past July. The link below will take you to our blog and show pictures of the tire and compartment damage.

Travels with Travis: July 11, 2011 Arriving Home But Not Without Incident

It was the inside dual on the drivers side of the motorhome. I have and was using a Pressure pro Tire monitoring system, but did not have any warning until the tire blew. The thing that upset me was we were on our way home and were only 50 miles from home and had arrangements to have all new tires put on shortly after getting home.

The Pressure Pro did alert us to a low tire when coming off of the Indiana Toll road onto the Ohio Turnpike. We got off at the first exit in western Ohio and was able to get the tire repaired. Just like others, the HWH jacks were used to raise the motorhome up high enough to take the tires on and off. We had picked up a screw in the thread of the tire some place.