tonyfourdogs

(starts at 8:30) Don't try this at home, kids

sch

Back in the '70s before hookbead was developed, inflating a tire was an adventure, you never were quite sure the
tire would hold or not on the basis of friction and air pressure. I had a number of blowouts over the years, sounds
like a 22cal pistol being fired. Hook bead tires do this on rare occasions when the hook is not fully seated. If you
are looking at the right spot you can see and sometimes catch the herniating tube before it blows with a bang.

jp911

Found out the hard way when a girlfriend decided to put air in the tires of my mountain bike. 100 PSI in clinchers (not tubeless) blew about an hour after she filled the tires...the front had a bent rim and torn sidewall and the rear just had a shredded sidewall.

robertorolfo

I posted about this in another thread, but one night I woke up to the strange and sickening sound of what sounding like my spokes creaking (sort of like the ping them make sometimes when you relieve stress on them), following by an almighty bang. It was about 3 am, and I was worried someone in the apartment building would call the cops. It's disturbingly loud.

Andrew R Stewart 

Any one who has worked in a LBS knows that creaking sound. Often accompanied with a "Ooo S..T!" then the bang if one's hands are not fast enough to purge the valve. (Actually more often one hand, the other one is madly trying to keep the creeping off tire in the rim). Andy

fietsbob

Ears ring for quite a while..

ksryder

Ugh I reflexively flinch just thinking about this.

2 stories:

When my now-wife and I started dating I was at her apartment one evening and I had brought my commuter bike inside with me. We were watching TV, the bike was leaning against the wall, not being touched, when BAM! the tire blew off. Turns out the rim tape had gotten out of place so one of the spokes was poking into the tube and it decided to fail at that moment.

It took several hours for the cats to reappear.

Second time: I had bought an old gas-pipe Raleigh and converted to a fixie/beater bike for getting around town. Having grown up in the 80s and 90s I wasn't familiar with the old cheap steel clincher rims from the 70s, and I also was not familiar with the fact that they don't have much of a hook to hold the bead. So I inflated the tires to 90 PSI which was normal, for the time.

I had two tires catastrophically blow out from under me before I figured out I should run lower pressure. I didn't crash either time, but something that loud and unexpected, during a ride, certainly made my heart rate numbers spike up a bit.

Retro Grouch 

It's been awhile but I can't ever remember being quick enough to save it once I saw the tire start to swell on the rim.

randallr

In the early 70's I had a Raleigh Grand Prix and a guy was working on it in the shop. I have always had a practice of putting talcum powder on the tube, more back then than now. The steel rims were not hook bead. He was using a compressor. Suddenly I hear a "POW" and see a white cloud billow out of the shop entrance . . . .

robertorolfo

Yes, that's the sound. What is it that is actually happening? I noticed the bead on my tire was slightly striated, so I wasn't sure if it was the sound of those striations creeping toward the edge of the rim, or the spokes somehow making the sound?

Sy Reene

Will manufacturer warranty cover this defect?

rm -rf

215 psi on a carbon clincher rim. Inflated with a floor pump! Some delamination at 150 psi first.

From pinkbike. Action starts at 2:30. Note the full face shield on the operator.
https://www.pinkbike.com/video/336672/

dedhed

Yeah, Every kid growing up in the 60's and '70s who filled up their ballon tire bomber at the local service station with the air hose has done this.

Jeff Wills

I remember working in the bike shop during the transition from 27" to 700C. We had many tires available in both sizes. If you put a 27" tire on a 700C rim it would work fine- then you'd pump it up to 80psi or so and it would crawl off the rim and go BOOM. Yes, Andy, I know that sound.

dennis336

I'm probably the only person who didn't know this but my exploding tube experience went like this: I had a flat tire on my touring bike - not a puncture, but the stem pulled away from the tube. So, I got a new tube and decided to test out my floor pump on the new tube before installing it in the tire (I had been having some issues with my floor pump sealing to the stems on my other bike and wasn't sure if it was a pump issue or a tube/stem issue with the other tubes). This was a heavy duty, puncture resistant tube and I started inflating it, again, outside the tire. I don't think I got above around 35 psi and I noticed the tube was looking somewhat distorted as it was inflated - some sections seemed to bulge more than others. So, I'm thinking the tube is defective since the tube isn't inflating evenly ... of course, at around 35 or so psi, the tube exploded. Was loud, and startling, as I'm thinking I'm well below the threshold psi that the tube could support and was NOT expecting the tube to burst.


So, if a burst tube is loud when it explodes inside the tire, I'm here to say it's even louder when outside the tire.


I always have to learn things the hard way ......

Retro Grouch 

I like the detail about the talcum powder cloud.

woodcraft

My thoughts as well.

fietsbob

Poorly installed tires can do this.. tube pushes the bead off the rim..

Inner tube goes boom..

kaos joe

Put this into the "Slow Learner" category.

The very day in summer 1993 we bought our first tandem, a Burley Duet (still going strong!). It's in the living room and it's 2am. BOOM! Those kids at the shop must not have mounted the tire correctly.......

A couple of months later, on a club ride, front tire, BOOM! in the middle of a pace line. Miraculously stayed upright and took out none of our friends. Gee, I thought I was so careful installing that tire.....

A couple of weeks after that, another club ride, another front tire detonation, this time at around 22mph on a turn. We were down in a split second. Lots of road rash but nothing broken and no other riders hurt. We limped home with about 50psi and I did some research. It turned out Specialized had made a run of Armadillo tires that were slightly oversize and they offered to replace my tires for free. They then proceeded to send me 2 27in tires instead of 700x25c. I donated them to a friend with full disclosure and he was going to use them to hang stuff up in his barn or something.

Continental ever since with 0 issues.

Glennfordx4

LOL, I hate when that happens. This summer while working in my shop ( very hot day mind you ) I heard what sounded like a shot gun going off, scared me as it was loud and didn't sound like a bicycle tire exploding. I went outside and looked around at my car & truck tires and all was good & I never found what it was, fast forward to last month when I found what went boom. A good friend had his kids old Yamaha quad here for a bunch of work and the new tubes he put in the rear tires exploded ripping the tires apart lol.

Glenn

Hoopdriver

Long ago, I asked my son to use my compressor to blow up the tires on a garden cart. 25 years later we still have the discussion of whether "blow up" means "inflate" or "explode". I was a good 20 feet away and my ears rang for half a day.

robertorolfo

Ha, now that is a funny story. As someone who sometimes takes instructions too literally, I might take your son's side on this one.

rumrunn6

Wilson!

italktocats

i use a pump, never happens.

dabac