Which is more dangerous - real tyre blowout or front tyre blowout?

For the record, both my front tyre blowouts were long ago in the days before tubeless tyres. One was an unexplained tube failure, and the other was the result of running over a kerb at speed when someone suddenly reversed onto the road in front of me.

These days, belt seperation would be the cause of most blowouts. And this would likely come from rusted steel belts, sometimes a result of poor manufacture.

John

John Henderson ( snipped-for-privacy@talk21.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

But more likely to be the result of a poor puncture repair - quite possibly due to the use of one of those sealant goos.

I was following a Nissan Micra up the M1 in lane 3 a few months ago.

A rear tyre blew out. - the car started be swerving left and right, then finally span about 2 or 3 complete revolutions.

He managed to miss the all the other cars, and the central reservation

- even ended up pointing the right way. - lucky guy.

Having seen that, I'd certainly not want my rear tyre blowing out.

Don't they normally do that when it's windy?

Art Deco wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I've had a blowout on the front of a Volvo 740 at motorway speed, Shredded tyre type one, A good grip of the steering wheel kept everything under control whilst I headed gently to the hard shoulder. The only rear blowout I've had was on an Ariel Leader, two up with luggage, again at motorway speed. Back end wobbled a bit as I drifted to the hard shoulder, back end felt grindy and when I stopped and got the bird off the back, I saw the rear tyre had almost completety gone, just one side of the beading left and no tread, rim was a bit pitted from running on tarmac. I think I was lucky with that one.

Remoulds?

But who uses fake tyres these days?

So If the general consensus is a rear tyre deflation is more dangerous then it's best to have the better/new tyres on the back.

I had a tyre deflation on my first new car a 1978 Fiesta (I'm sure I remember a safety point in the brochure was that the suspension geometry was set up so that a front burst was no big deal - cannot remember the Ford speak)

I can only assume that all manufacturers do this sort of thing now?

The message from Art Deco contains these words:

Silly fakirs?

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Tom" saying something like:

Negative Offset Geometry.

VW/Audi made a thing of it first, iirc.

Yes, but ... There is always a but.

This certainly seems to cover the somewhat uncommon occurence of the blowout.

Surely (I've told you before ... ) for normal driving conditions (ie. rain - a lot more common than blowouts) having the extra tread/grip in the front is better?

Grimly Curmudgeon ( snipped-for-privacy@REMOVEgmail.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Whereas Citroen did true centre-point steering, completely unfased by a blow-out as the steering axis goes through the centre of the tread contact patch, back in 1955.

Tom ( snipped-for-privacy@tpamy.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Do you make a habit of running your tyres until they're so shagged they fail dramatically?

Personally, I don't.

If one of my friends or relatives is going to lose traction on a wet corner, I'd much rather they take their chances with understeer than with oversteer. So best tyres on the back.

John

Are statistically less likely to blow out than standard tyres, actually.

So says TRRL anyway.

That's interesting. Presumably because they discard "doubtful" tyre carcasses.

Who dat?

Fak 'em.

Paul Cummins ( snipped-for-privacy@spam.vlaad.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Probably because a very high proportion of remoulds are HGV tyres, as opposed to a fairly low proportion of all tyres.

Remoulds are far more likely to suffer from tread separation, though.

The message from Art Deco contains these words:

Trapsnort and Road Research Laboratory. Now called the TRL. Based in Wokingham, IIRC.