Tire explosion kills farmer.

[RoyJackson]

This is the one we use... I get real squeamish around truck tires..

Amazon.com: Milton 501 Hi-Pressure Inflator Gauge with 5' Hose: Automotive

and made right here in the USA

Nice unit...put one on my Amazon wish list...

 

[RickB]

This is the one we use... I get real squeamish around truck tires..

Amazon.com: Milton 501 Hi-Pressure Inflator Gauge with 5' Hose: Automotive

and made right here in the USA

Nice unit, but as offered has no clip on chuck. No safer than a common $2 air chuck.

 

[RoyJackson]

Nice unit, but as offered has no clip on chuck. No safer than a common $2 air chuck.

Boy, I'm glad you noticed that!!
Useless without the clip

 

[ruffdog]

Nice unit, but as offered has no clip on chuck. No safer than a common $2 air chuck.

That is what I saw too. I have the short version of the same inflator. If I feel like I need to be far away, I could use the clip on chuck and adjust my regulator while the tire is 50' out the door.

 

[Soundguy]

I'm not volunteering to stand near an 1100x16 3 rib if it is going to blow off the rim in my direction @ 35PSI. "Older tractor" really doesn't tell us anything. There are 50 year old 4020's and 806's as of this year that had some pretty big front tires.

Tragic, at any rate. Folks in our area still grieve a well respected and loved truck repair shop owner who dies far too young due to an exploding tire he was repairing............

he said older jd. in my mind I'm thinking a-b 40 etc... but older is relative. older to someone might be 80's and it could be one of them big 4wd jobs with tires as tall as he was.


at work we have a tire cage.. at home i just stand away from the rim when airing.

but yeah.. tragic.

 

[rd_macgregor]

pressure testing plumbing. general rule of thumb = filling the pipes full of water, with just a little bit of air, right at the air injection point.

if a test plug or fitting comes loose, it gets fired like a bullet out of the pipe... if you just used all but air in pressure testing. if using water like noted above, if plug comes loose it is dramatically reduced to barely being shot out.

compressed air can hold a huge amount of energy!

many tire repair shops, will refuse dry rotted tires, due to risk of tire explosion.

===========
the scary apart with tractor tires, is they are not like car/truck tires that get replaced every so many years or miles. but rather last many years, and are at a higher risk of dry rot / surface cracks within the tire itself.

So, does this mean a loaded tractor tire a little bit safer than one with just air in it?

 

[Soundguy]

Much less air volume, so the pressure falls off real fast... Like a watterlogged pressure tank on a well, pressures up to 50, cuts pump off, crack a faucet, a spurt comes out and then almost no pressure

 

[ruffdog]

Who's to say his gage was not showing the correct pressure either?

 

[Soundguy]

Who's to say his gage was not showing the correct pressure either?

good point.

 

[Big Barn]

Just this past week , a flatbed was passing me and one of his portable , sliding winches on the rail bounced off . Missed it with my left steer tire but as it slid under truck towards passenger side , I clipped it with the rear , inside drive tire on rear drive axle . Took about 2 miles , if that and brand new tire , maybe 3 months old with 105 psi blew out . I HAD home made lights bars / mud flap hangers on the back . 6" x 2" x 1/8" tubing welded to 1/2" plate , bolted to frame . That light bar was literally torn off the mounting plate . Welds did not break , it literally ripped the tubing from the plate . The tear was any were from 1/2" from plate on one side , ( the front - closet side to tire ) to maybe 2" on back side of plate . The tubing was also bent backwards in the middle maybe 2" or 3" off center . Did have 3 led 4" lights in tubing . Center one was gone , outside one was o.k. but inside one , next to frame was o.k. on face but when I took it out of tube , it was Shattered on its backside inside the tube . Now while some damage could be attributed to tire / rubber flinging around , some damage was likely just from the concussion of tire exploding . That is why most tire places now a days always air tires in cages . Sorry for the loss of your friend , Neighbor . Fred H.

Trucker was probably too lazy to either remove unused portable slider or tighten set screw. Glad it didn't take out your steer tire, Fred. Glad you're here to tell the story.

Terry

 

[Jesse masterson]

Could have been the blow to the forehead knocked him out, with his arm severed he could have bled to death unable to stop bleeding being unconscious

 

[jwstewar]

Dad was a tire changer for 45+ years. He had some doozy of accidents over the years. I remember one instance. He was changing a semi tire on a 2 lane highway on an after hours call. Don't remember exactly how it happened, but the tire blew up on him as he was airing it up along the berm. Truck driver had left the truck to walk to a restaurant a few miles away to call and grab something to eat (before cell phones). It blew him across both lanes of the highway across the ditch on the other side of the road into a cemetery. Driver came back and couldn't find him but his truck and tools were all still there. Then finally a couple hours later Dad came to. It had knocked him unconscious. He went stumbling back across the road and finished the job. He came home his shirt, pants, and under shirt were all in shreds.

 

[chopped]

all sad

 

[Tollster]

We do certification testing on ASME pressure vessels, some are hydrostatic, using water, others are air, I was at one place where we pressurized the vessel to 538 PSI, and we sat in a bunker about 100 yards away. Once I saw one leak at 230 PSI on a 3 inch header that had the manifold on it, it slapped that 20' hose around like no ones business, then the fitting broke and it dug a hole 4' deep and 8' in diameter till it bled off.

I hate to be around any testing vessel whiles its pressurized.. but have to witness the soaping of the welds and pressure fittings.

 

[FredH]

Any one remember the old Split rims with the ring on them ? My Dad had a '61 Dodge that was my Grandfathers ( then His , now My brothers ) , that had those on it . I was like 8 or so when He had a slow leak in a tire so We stopped at a tire shop . The Guy fixed the tire , had remounted it and was airing it up on the machine , thus it was laying flat . I was like 3 or 4 feet away , typical kid , watching every thing , When my Dad reached out and pulled me back ? He never said a word , all He Did was point towards the ceiling ?

Looked up and in the ceiling . maybe 15' up , was a circle dent / break in the plywood ceiling the same size or so of that split ring on our tire . Typical kid at that age , Took me a few seconds to register that the Dent was caused by a very large force of something flying at incredible speed and was actually similar to something that I had been standing right next to !! ( I was slow back then , Heck , Still am !! ) Although My Dad had pulled me back a few feet , Once It sunk in , I stepped back even farther .

I like the analogy on fluid filled tires , Water logged pressure tank .

Fred H.

 

[Gary Fowler]

I saw a cherry picker tire blow off the split ring rim once when the mechanic shop was filling it. It went straight up about 30 feet in the air. That rim must have weighed 500# with tire and all. Lots of force to compressed air.

We had to air test a very large furnace on a job in Canada once. It had to air test because there was no way to get the water out. We had to test at over 2000 PSI and the blast radius was 1 km. All the test gauges and testing folks were then behind a double set of 40 foot sea containers filled with sand. Luckily we had no leaks so all the preparations were nil but with that amount of volume and pressure, it would have been a very big bang. We had to shut down all operations within that 1 km radius just in case.

 

[Soundguy]

i don't even like them double rims with spacers...

 

[MH8675309]

Just this last year in Clifford a man I knew was trying to air up a rear tire (for a tractor) and when he had trouble with it he sprayed ether into the tire and threw a lit match on it. The explosion will seal the rim but there's a chance the tire might not be able to take it. And, in this case the tire couldn't take it and the man died from impact injuries. He was only about 40.

 

[Dr_Zinj]

Any one remember the old Split rims with the ring on them? ...Fred H.

Oh Fred, yes I do. I worked in vehicle maintenance for most of my Air Force career. Lots of big equipment use split rim tires. Never saw a tire cage that wasn't all dented to heck. Every month or so you'd hear one blow in the cage. Trouble was, some of the bigger ones wouldn't fit in the cage, so they filled them flat on the floor. Sure enough, eventually had one blow and the half rim went clean through the 2x12 boards and roofing material of the main shop ceiling about 40 feet up. Sounded like a 500 pound bomb going off. All I can say is that hole and then ceiling and roof patch made a good object training lesson for our new airmen.