When did you have your tire blowouts?

[ShrimpBurrito]

With my 2 well inflated Kumho tires blowing out on our last trip, at only 3 years of age, I'm starting to think that while age may be a contributing factor in tire failures, there is some other significant factor at play. The first one blew just 60 miles after leaving the house; the other blew 48 hours and 750 miles later.

I also had 1 Marathon blow out 3 years ago at the end of a 3,500 mile trip just 40 miles from home. But that tire was at least 7 years old, so while I was lucky they didn't all blow out earlier in the trip, I had just chalked up the failure to age, and age alone.

But with the Kumho blowouts, I'm convinced something else is going on. What was common amongst all my blowouts?

• the TM was fully loaded, but not beyond the weight normally carried on other shorter trips throughout the year
• I was traveling at 60 MPH on the freeway
• the tire was adequately inflated
• the temperature outside was HOT

What was NOT common?

• the wheel bearings were freshly packed when the Kumho's failed; I had taken the TM on a trip immediately prior to the failure however, and the hubs ran cool, so I know hot bearings did not contribute to failure. The Marathon failed on our way home from buying the TM, so who knows when the bearings were packed.
• age - the Marathon was at least 7 years old from date of manufacture, the Kumho was 3 years old

So from this, I think one can make a few guesses as to what is contributing to failure:

• age
• weight
• heat

Of those factors, heat was the only factor that was new at the time of failure. Age and weight hadn't changed on all the trips we had done in the past year, but with all three failures, temperatures were in the high 90s or low 100s. On the way home on this last trip, I had bought a TST tire monitor, on suggestions from folks here, and tire temperatures were consistently 10-20 degrees higher than ambient temps. That meant the Kumhos could have been as hot as 120 degrees. We saw temps on our new 15" tires of ~130 degrees while coming back from southern Utah, through Vegas, until about 20 miles outside LA. The default temperature was the temp alarm to go off on the TST system is 158 degrees, so that gives a baseline at least of how hot the tires shouldn't get.

So let's do a poll. You can select multiple answers. I bet the people having blowouts outside of the heat of the summer are in the minority.

Dave