Driving on a lovely 100kph country road with all the brothers in the car... 7 yr old up to 24yr old... we're all there.

Nuffin but sugar cane on both sides... out comes a corner, half way through BANG! WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK!

WTF!

Rear end flew out, quickly down shifted and drifted it out/corrected and slowed her up and pulled over. Hazard lights on.

half the whole rear left tyre tread had pealed itself off, slapping in the wheel well, smashing up some of the plastic under cover and wearing the brake line to the braiding (didn't break it... thankfully).

The steal braiding of the tyre was all ripped up and it pealed through it.

HOW the hell does it do that? It wasn't a retread. It was old, as it was a spare after a punture 4 weeks ago, (yea we been slack)...

Is this normal?
When tyres get old... what is often the 'failure' process...?

We had no choice but to have a laugh about it, thankfully it wasn't on a busy M1. Made the day more interesting none the less...

Yes, the tread will seperate from the casing of the tyre. Age and underinflation are a big factor in this.

Did you check the tyre pressure on the spare after you fitted it?

We did about 5 days prior cause we noticed the front tyres were looking a little saggy. And that was when we still had the spare on cause we didn't swap back over after getting the punture repaired on the original tyre. (too lazy)

My elder bro's first thought was that i over inflated, I didn't have any specs with me so just went 65psi in front, 60 in rear. My tyres on my other car have a max psi of 200 so figured it should be adequate.

ah well... it was underinflated for a couple days prior to us hitting the servo mind you, so u would be on the money.

65psi FMD
what kinda car is it?

the only time i've ever had pressures that high was when i had a navara with an excel body on the back which was 750kg on its own and had 500kg of tools in it and they were light duty truck tyres

most family sized cars dont need anything over 40psi

blow outs are a fact of life with tyres that are getting abit of age, thats why they try to encourage people not to drive on tyres that are more than 10 years old cos they start to perish and next thing get hot and blow out like you expierenced

caravans and trailers are shocking for it, cos they never wear tyres out

One other thing Chris...

You cannot tell if a tyre has not enough air in them by looking

unless they are really flat... or less then 10 PSI..

and don't run more than 30 PSI....

in a beetle 20 PSI Max front and 30 PSI Max rear...
18 and 28 recommended by VW...

cheers

LEE

haha, well! there we go :P. I think it was 60 psi... i don't remember. Made it corner better none the less , the tyres haven't got a dome over the top of em like 'over inflated' kinda look.

Will have to double check ASAP then, but it certainly wouldn't help my cause hey? lol.

mmm... i like ur boobs craig.

My 76 model has the same specs, and that is for radials, remember a beetle only weighs 800 odd Kg and is light in the front compared to 'modern cars'..................I'm not saying its ideal, just confirming that Lee is not "dream'n" !

Quote:

Originally posted by bajachris88 haha, well! there we go :P. I think it was 60 psi... i don't remember. Made it corner better none the less , the tyres haven't got a dome over the top of em like 'over inflated' kinda look. Will have to double check ASAP then, but it certainly wouldn't help my cause hey? lol.

ah i see! that explains why i don't see no rounding.

I only eva learnt that from a vw service manual lol, obviously it doesn't apply to late 80's celicas hahaha.
Thanks Lee.

Hey man, u going to Valla this yr?

Chris, there should be a tyre placard on the fuel flap or inside the drivers door of your celica to tell you what the tyre pressures should be.

Quote:

Originally posted by bajachris88 ah i see! that explains why i don't see no rounding. I only eva learnt that from a vw service manual lol, obviously it doesn't apply to late 80's celicas hahaha. Thanks Lee. Hey man, u going to Valla this yr?

Chris you had everybody worried there for a while, we thought you'd nearly damaged a VW

lmao!!

and it ain't my car either lol.

Thanx 11cab, i will have to take a peak. on my ol' bomb (toyota) its in the glove box, it wasn't in my bros (the one that blew up) so it must be in the fuel cap then.

if not will google. i will check the tyre pressures tomorrow when the brother's at work and will reduce them, so he doesn't send me the bill by piecing together my contributions to the failure lol. It was an old tyre anyways...

glad to read everyone is ok
bet you had the brown undies happening

Thanks h,
yea it shook us all up.

But all we could do was laugh (once we pulled over). These 'side of the road' catastrophic failure situations are kinda getting old now, this stuff keeps happening to me!

The problem with the factory recommended pressures is that they do it for comfortable ride and not tyre wear. We run 32PSI all round on ours and they handle fine with nice steering weight and a comfortable ride as well.

Yogie

i found 28 in the fronts and 30 in the back otherwise it bounced too much in corners.

I know this thread is old news now, but who eva is interested, i got a photo of the tyre:

hate to say it but that looks like a remould (not a retread)

anyone who's running more than 20-21psi in the front of a bug clearly knows nothing about tyre pressures, weight distribution etc of a rear engined car

doesnt matter whether they're 14" pizza cutters or 18" fanbelts pressure is pressure and they need it around that value for correct steering/handling characteristics
About the only exception is offroading tyres but they're not gonna handle nice no matter what you put in them

ah! intersting. whats a remould? oldskool method?

cold or hot cap
orig case new lid ontop
truck tyre speciality

Can't see how anyone can justify driving around on crap tyres! I suppose it's down to how much you value the well-being of the occupants.

On the subject of pressures, all you need to do is read the manual. For what it's worth, I run 19F, 22R in my '59 race car - on the track.

Cheers, Greg

Yeah Greg, imagine the grip with 30F, maybe there's something we've been missing!