I never knew this could happen to this extent and i have seen wheels that have been heated or welded on. YouTube - Wheels of Fire Training Video
Yep, very scary. And just think what would happen on a much larger tire like the ones used in mining.
Very interesting. I never knew there was a chemical process that would cause that. It would have helped if the narrator had stated and range of temperature where that process begins. I can only imagine scraper or big haul truck tires being worked in the desert, especially on long hauls. I've had oilers and mechanics crawling all over them not knowing if or where the bomb was.
Great video. It would have been good to get some tips on how to avoid it. He's telling us that even if you deflate the tyre and break the bead, it can still happen. I know it's best practise to inflate tyres with nitrogen, but will nitrogen inflation prevent this? In other words is oxygen (air) necessary for this reaction or are the compounds in the rubber sufficient? I'm sweating now over the thought of the amount of wheel-nuts I've cut off over the years, even though I always deflate the tyres.
Once the wheel is cool, then all is fine. If you pop the bead then have the tire half off the wheel, again your fine. I dont think nitrogen would help in this case, as it is a chemical reaction with in the rubber tire its self that causes the heat leading to the massive pressure increase, seems like heat dissipating through the wheel prorbably helps the process along quite quickly.
Might want to watch it again especially where he tells that a man was killed even though they had the valve pulled and the bead unseated,but because of the rapid change in the temperature it re-inflated itself to destruction killing one and injuring the other. Scary to think how many times I welded rims on tractors to keep the show moving well never again ever.
Never had a clue,welded and heated wheels before. Just forwarded this to the company I work for, For review
Wish I had seen the video before I became the poster boy man I wish I had seen that video!! Back in 1983 our tandem dumps were cracking the front rims and then leaking. They were the big float radials 18:00 x 22.5. We had welded a few before this, we would weld the leak and run a bead all the way around the rim. Late on a friday I welded the leak and filled it to check if it was ok. I came in saturday and decided I would leave the air in and weld a little at a time and let it cool in between. Well I shut the welder off and forgot what I wanted to do, so I felt the tire and decided to weld some more. Got carried away and welded all the way around:Banghead:Banghead. The only reason I'm typing this today is I had to weld were the valve stem is and wanted to tilt the rim. I reached back to grab a block an it blew. I was by myself and walking around I thought a board hit my head my ears were ringing so bad. I the realized what happend and saw the tire was gone. This was before 911 I didn't want to upset my mom so I tried to read the phone book but couldn't. I called her and the firemen came in about 3 minutes. I'm a very lucky man , the rim made a 1" deep groove in the concrete. The power it took to make a 1" groove in one shot from what 2" above the floor is incredable. It flew up 16' bent the bar joist and roof deck and fell on my brothers motorcycle and trashed it. I had a severely broken wrist (4.5 hours of surgery), broken orbital bone under the eye and a ruptured ear drum. I spent ten days in the hospital. Lucky wow. People wonder why allot of things don't bother me well believe me I know life's to short to sweat the small stuff. Now get this!!! Our tire guy says yea there was a fire in there but it looks ok. So he remounts it and we ran it till it wore out!!!!! I can't make this stuff up. I would never walk near that tire ever. Randy
And here I thought I was dumb for removing the tire from the rim before welding on it. To think there was a more dangerous way to do this type of repair. Must be in the water. We like to live. Been to McDonalds for some coffee recently all the cups say caution hot. (DUH) I have to say though its good to have a video out there like that some of the kids growing up these days are missing a little common sense. Not saying that I havn't done my share of dumb ****.
Believe me I feel stupid for doing it , I figured I'd just weld a bit at a time and I got carried away. I was 25 and always in a rush, figured nothing bad would ever happen to me, etc. I've heard of two other local guys that did the same thing and they got killed doing it. After the fact it's just plain stupid I didn't at least let the air out. My lawyer wanted to sue firestone because the rim didn't have ,do not weld stamped on it. I told him to forget it just a stupid mistake on my part. The new rims we bought had it stamped on them. If that happened today every lawyer around would be calling me. Randy
The only thing worse than that you can do with a tire is fill it with oxygen. I knew a guy at a filling station once who was fixing a backhoe tire. His air compressor broke, and he needed to get the tire aired up and the machine running, so he made up some adapters and filled it out of his oxygen bottle for the cutting torch. Fortunately when it blew, he was not right next to it, but he suffered a similar experience to oarwhat. He is lucky to still be here.
Safety Film The Bridgestone film was interesting,I dont believe the tire would blow that fast as in the film, they only welded for 10 or 12 seconds on the wheel.No doubt if you welded long ,or heated enough the tire will finally blow,but not in that short of time.I just dont buy it.It's a safety issue for sure, but I dont deflate a tire just to put some heat on a stuck stud or nut .They also left out the danger of using starting fluid to seat a tire bead.
first place i worked after leaving school,the welder,who was experienced,but not much with plant,welding on truck wheel,removed from trailer,wheel/tyre heated and exploded,wheel rim hit workshop roof,about 30 ft, blew welder under bench,BUT left lying with leg outstretched,rim shot back to floor hitting his leg,very badly broken,almost needed amputation,bad limp and long time off work,tyres are very easy to take for granted/miss use,can't believe one of the other fitters didn't warn him,hard lesson to learn!
Thanks for sharing the video. Call me too safety conscious if you like but I would completely remove the tire when I weld. Yes the explosion is dangerous but so is a fire. Rubber burns like crazy once you get it started. Scott Welders360
Thanks for sharing this. I am going to show this to all my guys. I had no idea just how dangerous this practice is.
Thank you for sharing. We heat rims all the time to get them off the rear hubs on Ford 1 tons. I had no idea this could happen.
In Australia safety bulletins and incident reports are passed around different mines on a regular basis to educate people and make them aware of hazards that they would not normally associate as being one. Guaranteed, every couple of months there’s one there about someone being seriously injured or killed by heating or welding on a rim. The last one I saw was pretty horrific, looking at the photo's you'd swear there were two people involved, but upon closer inspection you can actually see it's just the torso and legs of one man on different sides of the workshop. Slightly different to heating and welding on rims I know, but most mines these days park the fleet up if lightening strikes within the open pit boundary. I’m sure you’ve all seen the photo’s on why they do this.
fortunately we did not lose the Swamp loggers last night ,when they modified wheels
I was thinking the same thing, they were torching, grinding, welding. should try to send them the link somehow.
did the welding thing on a ford rim 4-5 years back with just the air out. didnt know about this until about 3 weeks ago. i guess i am still here for a reason. nothing happened but NEVER again.
This is also why tires will explode after lightning strikes or contact with powerlines. The most important thing i saw in the film is: http://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3086/osha3086.html Heat must not be applied to a single-piece wheel. Cracked, broken, bent, or otherwise damaged wheels must not be reworked, welded, brazed or otherwise heated. Cracked, broken, bent or otherwise damaged wheel components must not be reworked, welded, brazed, or otherwise heated. Heat must not be applied to a multi-piece wheel. If your wheel has ANY defect it must be discarded, NO repairs to wheels are allowed.
I forwarded this vid to the goodsons.
Lee, Thanks for sharing I have welded on a few wheels will make sure to never do again unless tire is not mounted.
I guess OSHA is saying that wheels must be scrapped if it needs welded. I wonder if this has to do with heat treatment or what. Does this mean you can not "heat" wheels to have them powder coated?
Well TD25c,either your luck is running out or your just ignorant. What you need to realize is the heat applied by the few moments of welding is not the cause of the tire blowing but the cause of the "pyrolysis".The condition of pyrolysis (sp) occuring being the reason the internal temperatures rose so fast leading to the tire blowing. Did you look at the temp gage? 200-300-400-600-900-1100-1400 BOOM. Do yourself a favor and 'study' the video. Happy to be considered rude & obnoxious if it means someones the wiser(safer),Jay.
You are exactly right, I also had my doubts about the whole thing until i looked up pyrolysis and did some reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis The welding heat sets off a chain reaction that is why this is so dangerous. Basicly the welding is like applying heat to a match head. The match head being the internal rubber in the tire, "organic material under pressure and heated" is what starts the process of pyrolysis. Now that you think about it this is why tires explode from lightning strikes and powerline crane accidents, the internal tire is heated by the electricity. http://www.miningmayhem.com/2010/09/lightning-strike-on-rear-dumper.html is an example.
I really don't want to watch it.
I recall a similar video from Canada. Welded a excavator wheel, all was fine until the welder attached the air chuck and added air to the super heated interior, the tire exploded and fragmented, killing the welder.
Dirthauler: The link to the truck struck by lightning is amazing. Thank You. I knew the welding, and the power line strikes, but had not htought about lightning doing that to a tire. Those haul truck tires do serious damage!!! Broke 57 1" bolts!!!! Wow
I was thinking about this today, it took 2 mins for the tires to explode. If you saw the truck get hit by lightning and walked over to see if everything was fine, that would be about the right amount of time to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Threw a 3600lbs wheel hub 300 feet AND broke the 57 1" grade 10 bolts? SCARY STUFF!!! link again for those who missed it http://www.miningmayhem.com/2010/09/lightning-strike-on-rear-dumper.html
I found the article I was thinking of http://www2.worksafebc.com/PDFs/investigations/IIR2005108320019.pdf Worksafe BC has some excellent videos and they really lay it out unlike the osha folks down in the US. I can't even imagine the force to tear apart big quarry loader and industrial high pressure tires. I would imagine warming up a lug nut or some heat around the center hub is one thing but getting the metal that's in contact with the rubber over 200C would be a really bad thing in a hurry. Compressed air=higher oxygen density and Boyles law takes care of the rest.
that worksafe BC incident report was actually from the town i grew up in. remember that day. Could hear the blast on the other side of town. Didn't know the exact details of what happened until now. Far as i remember, everyone blamed it on improper use of a split rim.
Any rim needing welding on needs to be thrown away instead of being welded on, anybody willing to risk their life to save a few hundred bucks is beyond crazy in opinion. The rim I had that blew off my trailer a few years ago while driving had pits rusted in it where it attached to the dayton hubs from not being changed or rotated for years, it looked normal until you took it off the hub and examined it. It blew with such force it blew sideways 150ft and bent the axle as it went off and took part of the hub with it and lifted the trailer about 2 ft in the air as it went off. Thats the last time I ever worked on tires that still had air in them, we always let the air out before working on taking semi tires off, theres no way I'd ever work in front of a tire with air in it by sitting or standing there and putting the lug nuts on. Just out of curiosity has any data been done about the tmperature inside a tire thats rolling down the interstate at 70mph thats not fully inflated and creates heat from that or just how hot the air temp inside the tires get during the dead of summer when they blow out while driving, I've never seen any data on that before I've even asked my tire supplier and he claims he doens't know. The same effect is true I would think about hot wheel bearings and checking the hubs and tires after you stop from seeing a smoking hub, I'd tend to sit back and wait a long time before sticking my hand down there to check for how hot the tire or hub would be but does anybody know if it would work the same way as welding on a rim? Its not a statement more of a question.
Randy, I only tow with a 4 or 6 wheel pickup and a goose neck but on long trips I'll stop and check the tires, axles and hubs with a non contact temperature gauge. It really shows even side to side loading variances. I'll adjust the air pressure to keep the tire temps under 130-140f
Anybody want to offer their two cents on the subject of letting the tire and rim cool naturally or dumping cold water on it to shock cool the set, I've done it both ways and was never really sure which was best, we've had wheel bearings go out and the rim and tire were so hot you couldn't touch them and always wondered if its better to shock cool the rim and tire or just stand back and let it naturally cool itself off, once they are on fire its a little late but we have caught them just before, never had one blow yet from it but it always makes you wonder just how close they are to going or if you were to attempt to let the air out if it would go off like a bomb about that time or not. The hotter they are the more you want to stand back and throw the water on rather than stand too close, in the winter we have had it happen and we toss snow on from a distance but just how safe of a practice is it. Anybody had one blow while cooling it off before? Fast_st, I'd never given it a thought to use the temp gun, its usually never in the vehicle I'm driving at the time though, I"d have to have a dozen of them or more to leave one in each but for long distance trips I'll remember to add it to the list of things to take along from here on out, thanks. A friend of mine who drives truck for a living had a tire explode one time while he was using a cheater pipe to check for flat tires, as he reached in to beat on the inner dual the outer one blew, it set him on his *ss but didn't really hurt him, as he said it took him by surprise and he didn't know if the tire blowing put him on the ground or the shock of it he fell backwards and landed on his butt, either way he had to change his underware and as he said it had to be one in a million to have that happen at the time he was checking tires, but it does make you wonder?
:badidea Honestly, I would just get away from it and stay away from it. The thought of "shock cooling" something under pressure is crazy. Would you dump water on an air tank with 100psi in it that was so hot you worried about it setting fire to rubber? Seriously just get away and stay away, once cool, dismount the tire and put the wheel out of service forever.
Go ahead and give it a try then,if you're so unconvinced.Some people just think they know everything.
Some people learn from reading.......some learn from observing......some just gotta pee on that electric fence to find out fer sure! Rick
You are so right,oldtanker.I guarantee that he's NEVER been in the vicinity of an exploding tire.I've had a couple go on me,so I can attest first hand.Had a 23.1-26 off a log skidder blow on me(bead broke) with less than 20PSI in it.It threw me higher than the ROPS on the skidder.Came down head first on the corner of the stacker blade right above my right eye,fractured my skull in 4 places.Very lucky that's all that happened.Let a tire with 100PSI or more let go on you and you are going for one heck of a ride.He sounds like some of those old timers who used to stand right next to me as I aired up a split-rim and tell me they've seen one come apart and take a guys head off.B.S.!!!!!If someone has seen that first hand,they would never be near one,let alone stand right over one.ANYTHING under pressure is a bomb waiting to go off,and when it does,it's instantaneous-not one split second to react.Finding out "fer sure" and living to tell about it are two totally different things.
I have 17 years in the wheel industry and have been involved in more investigations than I can ever remember, the most common factor in most cases is lack of training or inexperience with wheels and tires. If you are unsure don't do it. Also its not just welding, any heat source can trigger this. I have some brutal pictures of two unfortunate men who heated some lug nuts to remove them, the heat transferred through the wheel steel and they didn't live to tell the tale. I have Michelin videos of tires blowing up and throwing a crash test dummy through the air, but they are to large a file size to upload here. One of them has a remote camera inside the tire showing the reaction start.
Not sure if I caused the stir or not I reread my post and didn't want anyone to take it the wrong way, first I was asking if its better to toss water or snow on a rim or hub to see if it sizzles or makes noise before checking for a hot wheel bearing or pounding on a tire checking for flats instead of just walking up to the hub and putting your hand on it to see if its normal, warmer than normal or hot to the touch and there's a problem, second at what temp does a hub get to start the reaction in the first place, a wheel bearing going out or a dragging brake will set it off but at what temp, if the hub or brake drum is at normal operating temp that shouldn't do it, but how much hotter does it need to be, water sizzle on the hub?, slightly before? need smoking brakes? or the sound of sizzling grease? Most everyone has worked around hot brakes at one time or another, you pull some steep hills and you finally get to where your going and need to unload, the first thing I usually do is to see if any brake got hot or you've got flat tires or low tires, most of my trailers are lowboys and the tires are fully exposed so you do the walk around and check as you take chains and binders off and get unloaded. The initial question I had was is it better to toss some snow on or water on from a distance first before ever getting near the tire and hub when you don't hear any sizzling grease or smell anything hot or just do the normal walk around and touch the hubs and pound on the tires to check for flats? Do you need to hear or smell something for the reaction to start or at that point is it already too late? I thought the temp gun was a great suggestion now at what temp is it safe to walk up to them and do the normal walk around and work around them?
there was in incident over here with a L1850 LeTourneau popped a tyre in the workshop with 3 boilermarkers welding the on the boom.. was a weriod failure was like it was a weakness in the sidewall and blew a 2" x 2" hole apart from their hearing the guys where ok
What about seating beads with starting fluid? Dose this not make it hot enough?
Are these videos hosted elsewhere? if so maybe you can post a link for us.............................
No, I got them on a flash drive from a training course I took down at the Michelin training center. I will upload them to rapidshare sometime this week.
I would be very interested in seeing these videos.
No,there is no sustained fire to generate the heat-although it is strongly recommended against doing this.There are many,many other ways to get a tire to take air(blast of air,pack the beads with soap,etc.).All it it takes is a little too much starting fluid,and you've got an explosion.
Interestingly enough a non mechanical friend moved into a new home a couple of weeks ago. He calls me up and tells me he has a trailer tire with a broken bead and wants to know about using starting fluid to seat it. So I drove over to see what he had going on thinking it was on his single axle trailer. Well it kinda was.....single axle lawn cart! I tipped it on it's side......removed the cotter pin and slid the wheel off and we drove into the local repair shop who seated the tire for him at no charge! His very lame excuse was "I didn't know how easy it was to take that off"......cause he didn't look! It isn't the tires that are dangerous......it's the people working around them! Rick
Oh yes they are dangerous.ANYTHING pressurized is dangerous.But you are correct that it's the human factor that determines the final outcome indeed.Ignorance is a useless excuse after the fact-providing that there is a survivor.
We had a local tire shop death on the weekend - welding on a wheel. Bump for all those who haven't watched the video in the first post yet.
Why not just dismount the tire?
Well, that would be the proper way, but some peple are always in too big of a hurry to spend the extra time it takes to do it right. Unfortunately, some like the above tire man will never get the chance to do it over the right way.
I think the cause of the explosion has nothing to do with the tire at all. I am pretty sure that it it caused by the transfer of heat from the rim to the air that inside of a preassurre vessile. In this case the tire that is on the rim is the weakest link in the preasure vessile and that is what fails first.
If you listen to the soundtrack on the video the Bridgestone guy explains it. The root cause is a chemical reaction called pyrolisis caused initially by the transfer of heat from welding the rim to the tyre in the first instance. However even if you take away the source of heat the reaction continues and it's the heat generated by that reaction that causes the pressure to rocket up and finally the tyre to explode. So the process is more complicated than you think. The problem is that even removing the valve stem is not guaranteed to allow the air to exit fast enough, because the rapid rise in pressure cannot be relieved just through the small diameter of a valve stem, so the tyre may still explode.
Thanks for sharing! I passed it along to a few of my coworkers.
yes it's true, rubber burning can kill u in very short time. thx for the life saving share.
www.cnplus.co.uk/...dyggor-gaylord...tyre-explosion/1677866.articl ... This is the result of heat transfer to a DEFLETED tyre. Until I read this thread I thought a deflated tyre was safe, which got me thinking of an accident some years ago at Dyggor gaylord in the UK I use to work for that company and thought the tyre which exploded was inflated. However, after looking at the report I now know it was deflated. Thanks for starting this thread it has made me look at the safety of working around tyres in a whole different way.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...pot/1691691.article+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us correct link Here is an other video that shows what happened less than 2 mins after a weld was made on a wheel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZuBj_KW84E
06Apr90 UK: SAFETY EXPERTS SEEK SOLUTION TO EXPLOSION AT DYGGOR GAYLORD DEPOT. 5 April, 1990 | By CNPLUS Safety experts are blowing up tyres to try to find out how three fitters died during an explosion at a plant hire firm in Nottingham last week. Health and Safety Executive scientists are carrying out controlled explosions on 2.5 m tyres similar to the one that blew up and killed three men at Dyggor Gaylord's depot.An inquest into the deaths was adjourned last week pending results of the scientists work.An HSE spokesman said: 'The research and laboratory divisions have been called in. They have collected debris and are doing forensic tests and setting up controlled explosions.'We are doing what we can to ascertain exactly what happened. The job is made difficult because all the immediate witnesses are dead.'Three men were working on the brakes of a Caterpillar 631 scraper with oxyacetelene welding equipment when the huge tyre blew up in their faces.Fitter Gordon Bradley, 39 and welder Colin Keightley, 30 died instantly from multiple injuries.Fitter Patrick Richardson, 22, died later in Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre.A one-tonne brake drum was blown 10m by the force of the explosion.John Clarke, who saw the explosion, told the Nottingham Evening Post: 'There was a very loud bang - I turned and saw a cloud of thick black smoke.'It's a terrible shock, everyone is very subdued. It hasn't sunk in yet.'The resumed inquests will be heard before a jury because the men died on industrial premises.Guidance on working with high pressure pneumatic tyres is expected from the HSE once the results of the inquest are known.Dyggor Gaylord is a subsidiary of CP Holdings.
Work safe - think about what your doing - take the extra few minutes the down side of death; injury & equipment damage is a far more expensive in the long run Spread the word - Well done
Got a question Guys. I have a GMC 7000 with Dayton Split wheels 20" on it. I will never use it to capacity weight. So I was thinking Getting a tubeless wheel that I can use or have made to use a LT tire on it. Not a split rim. Any Ideas guys? I see the new Dodge trucks have a 20" on them. So I just want to get rid of the split rims 900 20's Do you know anyone who makes a wheel that I can use? Thanks Guys
Are you sure they are Dayton wheels?I'm more inclined to believe that whats on that Jimmy are 20'' hub-piloted wheels with a solid lock ring and drop center wheels(unless this is an old,old Jimmy in which case what you have are "widow-makers"These are the wheels that had no lock ring-they split in two).Dayton wheels use a cast iron spoke hub and the rims are secured with wedges and log nuts, either a 5 or 6 spoke hub.Your truck should have a 10 hole budd style wheel ,with one set of ten lug nuts holding on the duals and 5 studs/nuts on the steer axle.If this is indeed what you have, then the next question is what year is the truck?If it's 70's or newer it should have the solid lock ring variety.
Regardless of which wheel you have, your only option for what you're looking for is custom made.Big $$.
i think after discussions in another part of the forum regarding welding wheel rims it's about time this thread was brought back to the top for those members who haven't seen it before. I'll also include the link I posted on the other thread out of interest. The guy who wrote this article and myself were part of a team investigating a fatal accident where a LF tyre on a large haul truck exploded and killed the operator. The incident is mentioned on Page 4 as is the root cause of the explosion (#6 on the "initiators" list on Page 1). IMHO what he doesn't know about OTR tyres isn't worth knowing. Thanks also to Jonas302 for digging up the thread and posting a link to it in the other discussion. http://otrglobal.com.au/wp-content/...al-bulletin-Tyre-explosion-misconceptions.pdf
Thanks for posting that report Nige Some really good info in there. Got me to thinking though about the TPMS systems... I wonder if it would be feasible to have the sensors sense for oxygen >5% ? since this would be one of the main factors in providing the necessary ingredients for explosions...
You'll note that for an explosion caused by diffusion there is no requirement for any oxygen at all to support combustion. This is scary **** TBH ............
If they are truly Dayton 20", then 22.5 non-split rims will directly replace them. Been slowly weaning the 10.00-20 rubber off my '69 Brockway.
We have a local tire company come to the shop and dismount/mount tires for us. This last summer they were up changing some tires out and one of the guys was inflating a steer tire that was just mounted on a 22.5 aluminum rim, He was just getting ready to install the core and the sidewall zippered. Filled his pants he did trying to get away from it. No one got hurt, but when one zippers you will know the sound it sounds just like a zipper as the side wall gives way. Top name brand tire too. Truck Shop
The zippers will make all of yer hair stand on end! I have had 4 different ones zipper on me over the years.
this needs to come to the top again. maybe save a life.
I have just shown this to our fitters, seems they have been heating stuck wheel nuts for years!!!! they won't be now though.
I'm going to bring this back to the top again, for no other reason than I came across the report written at the time by the tyre expert on the investigating committee. Photos are on Page 10 onwards. https://otrglobal.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/OTRG-Case-study-Diffusion-tyre-explosion.pdf
What was the wood used for in shipping the tires anyway?
It was common to use short-ish lengths of 3" x 3" timber as a separator between the beads to keep them apart, basically to keep the tyre in shape if they were laid flat and double/triple stacked. Either that or it was cribbing placed under the tyre so that it could be handled by a forklift. Either way whoever mounted those tyres was not taking care to make sure all foreign material had been removed from inside them before installing them on the rims and inflating them.
I worked for the Port of Seattle at SeaTac airport for a short time. One of the other operators was injured but very lucky when he and a co-worker decided to work on the jetway tires and rims, separating them for recycling the metal. These tires and rims were laying about and they thought it was a good idea to deal with them in a slack time, but neither of them had any tire training or experience. Just a glance will tell you they are highly loaded multi ply tires with more than 100 PSI in them, that they neglected to deflate first. They started taking the split bolts out till they got to critical load and the remaining bolts partially sheared. He got slapped pretty hard but both could have easily been killed, just like in this video that TS posted. It was one of those " IF I had only known what they were up to" moments, as I do have that experience.
I went on an EMS call, guy got a new trailer, his brother in law had a car with 14" tires, they decided to mount the 14.5" trailer tires on the car rims. It killed one of them, and the other was blinded and lost both hands. I always figured the dead one was the lucky one.
I hate tires. Last time I aired up the tires on the wheel loader I clipped on the chuck and walked 50 feet back to the shop and turned the air hose on from there. Seen a 797 tire blow from a quarter mile away and that was scary enough for me.
Jet tires are not air filled, think its nitrogen they fill them with, watched it done before, but that decades ago now, if regular tires are not bad enough, jet tires are far worse in my opinion and far fewer are even qualified to work on those compared to regular air filled tires. The joke at the local airport years ago was, if you can afford your own personal jet, you can probably afford to pay someone to come a few hundred miles one way to change a flat tire.
What's amazing is how many tires are installed on aluminum truck wheels that have worn out bead/seating on the rims. After ten years and X amount of miles the rims are pretty tired in most cases.
A lot of the larger mining operations also inflate their tyres with nitrogen. Even doing that will still not prevent one type of explosion (pyrolysis or diffusion, I forget which) because it does not require oxygen for the explosion to take place.
Aircraft tires use nitrogen so when at altitude they don't deflate like air filled tires do, it has nothing to do with preventing explosions. Smaller aircraft that can't climb high enough still use air, but once the aircraft is capable of climbing over a certain altitude, their all nitrogen filled, unless they've come out with something newer in the last decade or so I'm not aware of.
deflation at altitude is not the reason. The nitrogen molecule is larger and tends to keep more consistent pressure overall, but the wheel corrosion is a big deal. https://monroeaerospace.com/blog/wh..., the,consistent pressure and is nonflammable . We run tubes so it is not an issue, but all the aircraft rims are alloys, and do corrode readily.
Learned something new, thanks skyking
I run a special mix...... Nitrogen — 78 percent Oxygen — 21 percent Argon — 0.93 percent Carbon dioxide — 0.04 percent Trace amounts of neon, helium, methane, krypton and hydrogen, as well as water vapor.