Interesting night on the highway....

[sixtysix]

Heading up to Watertown tonight on I81, and came up on this truck (luckily we are getting leftover rain from the hurricane so we were in the cage) and I noticed something small like a chunk of rubber bouncing across the road from an 18 wheeler. I told the wife to hold up (we were overtaking) because a tire could be letting loose.

I have seen a few of these truck shed tires and I did not want to be right behind him, even in a car. Holy crap folks.......the next thing I saw was some sparks coming from the wheel and I said "Slow down NOW!" Lucky we did. A chunk of red hot brake drum came bouncing out and then all hell broke loose.

The whole dual wheel assy. and hub sheared off the truck and burst into flames. It spun around a few times in the road and then exited the highway in front of the car. Huge chunks of red hot metal were scattered all over the road . I can only assume the brake fluid was causing the fire.

Well at least we didn't get hit with anything...we did run over some red hot chunks, but no problems.

My guess is the brake locked up and caused everthing to get hot and the whole works finally just let loose......pretty good show anyways. GLAD I was not riding for a change......

This is the thrid time in about 18 months I have seen a truck tire (or worse in this case) let go.....be careful around them trucks!


Anybody else got a good truck story?

[Hepcat]

The fire is usually caused by friction. As the tire looses its bead, it starts to drag on the hub. Eventually the spinning/braking action of the tire against the road creates enough friction/heat to set the tire on fire. This is why truckers often won't stop, especially if they know they already blew out the tire. Quite a few trucks have gone up in smoke doing so. Moving down the road keeps the heat blowing backward instead of upward, thus saving the load. That's part of the reason that trucks use dually tire systems instead of one big tire on each side. As long as they don't lose the front tires, they usually won't stop until things have all shaken loose, fallen off and everything has had a chance to cool down.

[jetmechmarty]

A coworker of mine caught a cap on I-285 as it was shed from a truck. The bumper cover and hood of his Honda Civic were totaled. Fender damage too. He said that if he had been on his bike, it would have cost him his life.