Jays_SSZ28

iTrader: (2)

Me and my girlfriend were coming home from being out of town TWO YEARS AGO. Going down the highway in my '01 Z28 around 9 pm on a sunday, no cars around us.

Sounded like a gun went off in the car and I had recently been to the range so thats not an exaggeration, I thought I blew a tire and pulled over, nothing.

Rest stop was a mile ahead so I pulled in and checked all under the car, nothing.

I don't scare easily and this scared the **** out of me, not to mention the gf wanted to call triple a and have it towed.

The following week I lifted the car and looked for anything, a hit mark, road dust missing, etc. Found nothing.

TODAY I took the tire out to use on something and found it blown on the bottom. Strange thing is it was still holding 30 or so psi.

Anyone seen anything like this before?

RPM WS6

iTrader: (3)

Crazy that it's still holding air pressure after that event. So then only an outer layer of the tire blew apart I assume? I guess there must have been a slow leak allowing air to seep between the layers of the tire, and eventually the outer layer just couldn't withstand the pressure any longer? If so, the leak between the layers was pretty small if there's still enough air to account for 30psi of pressure after all that plus two additional years of now leaking freely to the atmosphere.

Had you ever used the tire before? Strange sort of defect here, this is certainly not a typical failure mode in my experience.

Jays_SSZ28

iTrader: (2)

Heres a pic of the tire, I had to roll this frame off a trailer and thats all I had.

I bought the car as a roller, got the tire off a friend of mine and it's been in the car 9 years untouched. Looks like it's never been used, I never used it.

This car was driven from fl to tx and back 20 hours straight one way and it didn't blow then. I was thinking heat and too much pressure, but that wasn't the reason.

I have seen a regular tire blow up, like whole tread blew off. But it probably had too much pressure in it and was in direct sunlight. That was on a car at a shop I worked at. The guy had to have a tire on the car because of the rules or whatever. The owner of the place claimed to have heard it blow up.

I don't know about this one though.

NC01TA

I would guess it was exposed to weather extremes before you obtained it. In any event I certainly appreciate your sharing this experience. If I hear an explosion from the trunk I'll know where to look.

RockinWs6

Woulda scared the bejesus outta me too. Was passing a semi on RT80 (on a Sunday) and his left frt tire blew out as we next to him @ 75mph, Still freaks me out how lucky we were nothing happened.