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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 22:21:30 :
Had a weird thing happen to me today -- a tire with plenty of tread left on it, on a pickup with no load in the bed, developed a bulge right in the middle of the tread. The tread layer wore off pretty quickly and exposed the steel belts. The first clue was a severe pulsation. I was expecting it to blow at any moment, but decided to try to limp home with it (100 miles), partly because I was lazy and partly because my spare is a bias-ply and when I put it on with a radial on the other side, the truck hops all over the road at speeds above 35 mph. With 50 miles left to go, I took another look at it and the outer layer of steel belts had worn completely through and a patch of tread about 8" across was missing. I had 40 lbs of air in the tire, so I reduced it to 30 so as to make the sides that weren't worn out take more of the load. I took the back roads the rest of the way home so it wouldn't blow on the freeway and made it back okay.
So here's what I'm wondering. When a tire starts to delaminate, is it better to keep it well-pressurized to minimize flexing and heat, or is it better to air it down so there's less stress on the weak spot and the sides carry more of the load?
By the way, the tire was a Sears RoadHandler mud and snow, probably about 40 years old, so I guess I can't complain about it coming apart, though it still had 1/4" of tread on it.
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