This is/was the spare tire on the Beast. It’s been sitting at the RV service place for a couple of days, waiting to get a short list of relatively minor stuff done. Yesterday afternoon, the folks there tell me, they heard a very loud explosion which shook the building they were sitting in. It wasn’t clear what it was. This morning, a couple of them went out to look at a hawk in a tree and noticed this. They called me. Yep: the tire looks like it just plain blew up. The service writer there calls it “freaky.” I say, “huh???"
There was no damage to their property or to the trailer parked next to it. No one was hurt. There seems to be no damage to the motorhome other than the black scuff marks on the rear wall just above the tire.
The tire’s age is unknown. It was the spare tire when I bought the rig over two years ago. Last week I replaced the old ratty-looking white-ish cover on the spare with a new, spiffier black cover. The easiest, although still puzzling, explanation is that the black cover concentrated the heat from the sun, and Pow!!!
I’ll get the RV back from these guys on Monday and schedule an oil change etc with Buck’s next week. And ask Buck’s if they have any ideas about what might have caused this.
A new tire will be on the order of $150-200. A new cover (NOT black!) will be about $30.
Sigh.
Hello Rich, every tire sold in the US has the manufacture date imprinted on it. It is after the DOT and in the format of XXXX with the first two numbers being week and the last two the year. Example, 2314 would mean the tire made in the 23rd week of 2014.
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