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

The message from Art Deco contains these words:

That's it. Right hoot to drive round, too. I had a fun afternoon trying to upset a semi-auto Fiesta once. Had a servo controlled clutch with a couple of contact studs on the gear lever. Hand on the gears and the clutch went down. Hand off the lever and the clutch did various things according to what the car was doing. I did manage to upset it, but not badly (or dangerously) and it soon get its knickers untwisted.

Again apparently not, since most of them are "bead to bead" remoulds on tested good carcasses.

Yup. Modern remoulds have moved on a long way since the bad old days.

A decent remould maker will even produce batches around the same carcass

- meaning you really are getting a decent set of matched tyres.

I'm getting really tempted to try some sticky Colways on the arse of the

I'm trying to find some spare ford Steelies to sandblast and powdercoat, and then stick some Colway Winter tyres on it for the coming season.

Then while running on them, I'll get the other wheels sorted similarly, and put some new Falkens on them :-)

Anyone got some Ford Escort MK6 steelies of any size that they don't want?

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

Quality typo.

I had a front go on an Avensis milliseconds after hitting debris on the M40. It was the front right and I was in the middle of a left hand sweeping gentle-ish bend. Most of the car load was on that wheel and I found myself veering sharply out of the first overtaking lane toward the side of a truck. Still managed to wrench it back, hit the hazards and drop onto the hard shoulder without clouting the side of an artic (he'd probably not have noticed).

I had a front go on a hired Luton at 60 on the A1 once. Crappy van went left sharply and almost took out a Fester. Getting that under control was the scariest moment. The thing was shaking to hard that the wing mirror fell off.

A Civic VTi chucked a rear left on me on a brand new tyre along a right hand sweeping bend at 60. That ended up with the car pointing backwards after swapping ends before I knew that I'd lost a tyre. Never found the main tread of that tyre but the wheel was still wearing both sidewalls. Fortunately that was an empty road and the remaining good wheels brought it to a halt quickly.

Recently I was behind a BMW that shed all of its tread from the right rear on the M1 I'm pretty certain it was all of it because it ended up on my bonnet. The beemer promptly veered into the barriers of the central reservation and then veered hard across all three lanes of the M1. It was nearly sideways when it got to the inside lane, the laws of physics decided that it wasn't going to make that sharp a turn and it flipped over onto the roof. He finished up upside down on the hard shoulder slowly spinning round for a few seconds. The road was pretty busy but for once seemed to be full of drivers who were looking out of their windows and paying attention. By the time he was veering back onto the motorway he was entering empty road as we all braked to avoid being collected and nobody got rear ended either. I pulled over too to get the tyre off my bonnet and check he was alright along with almost everyone who'd been directly in sight of the accident. There seem to be rather a lot of airbags in new cars theses days and it appeared that they'd *all* gone off. The driver was fine though.

On reflection I think I'd rather have a front go if it ever happens again.

Warwick

The message from warwick contains these words:

Lesser of two weevils, innit.

Call for votes: Creation of newsgroup *uk.trapsnort*

It would be a damn sight more interesting than the usual PT weenies.

I think the key issue is not to panic (easy to say!) when it happens and to always be expecting something odd to happen, not idly dozing in the driving position. Clearly on a fairly sharp bend you're not going to have much luck, nor in heavy traffic, but if you have a little room and are not panicked youre more likely than not going to be able to control it reasonably.

I think the positive point with front wheel blowouts is you can steer that wheel to counteract its effect, obviously on a rear you cant so you have to try to deal with whatever it throws at you.

I'd agree. Had a front blowout (Mondeo) while tanking down lane 3 of the M1. Just made a point not to touch the brakes until down to about 20mph on the hard shoulder, and then very gently. Wasn't difficult to control.

Haven't had a a rear blowout, but have had a rear wheel come off (I've learnt now you have to tighten the wheel nuts after having the wheel off :-) ) That didn't seem a problem to control either. Car (mini) just tipped over a bit!

Both of the above were when going in a straight line though. On a bend may have been a different matter. Think if I had to choose I'd want the front to go for reasons others have stated.