Blowout At 80Mph

[SpokesT]

I`m in France at the mo, and just thought I`d recount what happened on the way.

Cruising past an artic on the toll road at an indicated 80mph (the limit here, roughly) and a previously felt vibration somewhere in the car suddenly got a whole lot worse. As I got past the front of the truck, the whole car started to shake. I`m in the outside lane, the car is fully laden with holiday luggage including my wife and kids, and the next thing it starts trying to overtake itself. I near pooped my pants, but no time for that cos I needed to get across to the hard shoulder asap. I hit the brakes as carefully as I could under the circs while steering across the front of the truck I`d just gone past, while keeping the back wheels behind me at all times as per the manual wherever possible, and came to a quivering halt in a handily placed layby. We all baled out amidst clouds of smoke coming from the nearside rear wheelwell making me think the next problem is going to be the fire apparently starting right next to the fuel tank, but luckily this wasn`t the case. The tyre, a Bridgestone Potenza, was however a shredded mass of molten black rubber on the inside, with no inner wall left at all. The outer wall and tread were intact, which makes me think I`d driven over summat sharp on the ferry deck because as I turned round on the ferry to drive off, there was a clunk as if sideslipping off a small kerb or ledge. I reckon some sort of chocking hook or similar with a sharp edge had sliced not quite but almost through the inside tyre wall, and the heat from the next hour of high speed driving on the toll route had done the rest.

The rim seems to somehow be undamaged, and after a change onto the spare wheel (aaaargh, who put all that luggage on top of it!!!) we were back on the road, shaken but not stirred. Testimony to the handling of the good old IS200 :-)

Change of pants needed again next day when I saw the price of tyres in France!!!! I'm gunna take my chances and wait till we get back home to buy another!

Hope all is well in Blighty :-)

[Bobba77]

Woah, lucky escape there mate. Glad everyone is okay.

[spurty]

Bloody scary stuff! Glad you managed to come to a safe stop!

[kenfoxy]

Good bit of driving there mate. Your skill may have saved your lives. Should remind us all to give cars with smoking tyres a wide berth. At least you had a full size spare.

[TommyH]

Phewwww, could have been BAD. Glad your all ok.

[deckie77]

Sounds exciting, a healthy dose of adrenalin now & then is good for you so i've heard!!!

Joking aside, glad everyone is OK, that ending could have been very different.

[Parthiban]

Wow that sounds some experience, glad it had ended so well as it could have been really bad :)

[H13 BBO]

Bloody hell !

[SpokesT]

I've done a fair bit of driver training over the years at work so maybe that helped. Doing the return journey on Monday so fingers crossed it's an uneventful trip this time :-)

[Rory]

glad all is ok,

but since the IS is known for uneven tyre wear on the inner edges it is very wise to check them regularly and especially before every long journey

[eddieblock]

same thing happened to me in a mercedes van. front tyre blew as I was overtaking a lorry but the tyre also snapped the brake pipe so had no brakes ! luckily the motorway was quiet and managed to slow to a stop on the hard shoulder.

[SpokesT]

Yeah that inner tyre wear is a bguger, I try to keep on top of it. But I'm pretty confident it was a catastrophic failure on the inner tyre wall cos the tread and outer wall is still A1 which is a sickener cos there was a good 5mm of tread left so a good year's motoring for me without the expense that I could do without. And on top of that I missed out on the rims in Brighton that the prodigal son Lexynic managed to acquire :-(

[SpokesT]

Here are the pics I took at the roadside

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/SpokesT/TyreBlowoutAt80mph#

[Tony-Bones]

Nothing is a sure bet, even tyres, why not simply slow down, ever more so with kids in the car.

[eddieblock]

Nothing is a sure bet, even tyres, why not simply slow down, ever more so with kids in the car.

sorry to hijack the thread but is there anywhere in south wales that uses your settings ?

[SpokesT]

Tony, my satnav tells me I'm doing 74mph when the clock tells me I'm doing 80. I stuck at 80 on the clock, the limit in France is 81, cos it's more or less top dead centre and isn't even fast enough to get a speeding fine in the UK. Please don't give me advice on how to keep my kids safe. I'm actually a professional when it comes to keeping people safe, and I mean that literally.