Fat Tire Exploded while seating

[IOUZIP]

Tonight I was reseating a fat tire on a tubeless rim and the bead failed. It exploded at about 35-40 psi. The Vee Tire Mission Command 26x4 was the tire. I may have had too much soapy water and combine with the dried Orange sealant proved to be a bad combination. Tire must have slipped the bead and me and the wife are a little tone def tonight. The force did crack a 5 gallon bucket it was laying on so we were very lucky. The tire is damaged with a broken bead. I watched it on our security camera and I could see the water and sound pressure distort the surrounding area. I was about 2 feet away when it blew. It sounded like an explosion which prompted my neighbor to come outside and ask what just happened.

Here is a picture of the 5 gallon bucket. Don't know if the explosion broke the bucket or the explosion knocked the bucket against something and caused the cracks. Either way thank God I was not holding the tire. Lesson learned for sure.

 

[Jon A]

Please, don't inflate fat tires to 40 psi. Expect them all to explode if you do that.

 

[IOUZIP]

Yea good advice 30 psi max. I had the tire connected to the air compressor with the Schrader valve removed and the air pressure spiked. I ordered the same replacement tire tonight. Good thing our hearing seems to have returned.

I found a video on Youtube that pretty much shows what I experienced.
We blew it! Inflating a tubeless bike tire until it fails catastrophically

 

[JRA]

Reminds me of my first experience with tubeless back in the ghetto days. I was in my friends shop and it blew sealant all over his Harley that took me a long time to clean....turned me off of tubeless for years! Now I can't see bike life without it.

 

[Jon A]

Yeah, if they're these: https://veetireco.com/product/fat-bike-mission-command/ it looks like 20 psi is max recommended which is pretty normal.

When setting up tubeless, you only need the initial blast of high pressure air until the tire starts to "sort of" hold air. You can then bring the pressure up slowly until the beads pop into place. Once they do that, adding more air doesn't do any good.

Much depends upon the design/quality of the wheel. Many cheap fatbike wheels don't have anything to help center the tire on the wheel concentrically. You'll notice this even when running tubes when sometimes you do a less than stellar job of mounting a tire and find the bead is sucked down on one side and wanting to pop off on the other (creating a huge wobble). With wheels like that, getting them taped/sealed up well enough to hold air is only part of the problem.

 

[Uuzd4S]

Yeah, if they're these: https://veetireco.com/product/fat-bike-mission-command/ it looks like 20 psi is max recommended which is pretty normal.

When setting up tubeless, you only need the initial blast of high pressure air until the tire starts to "sort of" hold air. You can then bring the pressure up slowly until the beads pop into place. Once they do that, adding more air doesn't do any good.

Much depends upon the design/quality of the wheel. Many cheap fatbike wheels don't have anything to help center the tire on the wheel concentrically. You'll notice this even when running tubes when sometimes you do a less than stellar job of mounting a tire and find the bead is sucked down on one side and wanting to pop off on the other (creating a huge wobble). With wheels like that, getting them taped/sealed up well enough to hold air is only part of the problem.

Just visited VEE Tire Co's webpage for this tire. ALL of their Fat Bike tires are rated @ 8-20 PSI which is typical as you'd already mentioned. https://veetireco.com/product/fat-bike-mission-command/
I've been running the Vee Zig Zag's on a Tannus insert (rear only) for the last half of their service life w/ stock wheels on my RCS. With that insert there is a 1psi per hour loss of press due to compression of the foam. Also typical for a Fat Tire w/ these insert's. Point being, I usually start @ 23-24psi and ride for about 90 min, leaving me w 21-22psi at the end of the ride. I pull the valve core after each ride & re-inflate about ten min prior to peddling, which allows the foam to expand back to their nominal size. . . . It add's to the routine but no flats so far.
I figure there's a built in "fudge factor" of about 10% over the max allowed for a 26x4" Fat Tire. I wore out a set of wire bead Origin8 Supercell's (@ 30TPI & the same max press @ 20) last year at 22 psi. A Pretty fast tire @ 20-22 psi and they held up well. I paid $55 bucks ea and now they are near $90 ea. I did experiment with both these "Road Tires" @ 16-24psi and WoW . . . what a difference 1psi makes in Watt Hrs and calories burned. The Tannus inserts "Give" noticeably more than a plain tube making them "feel" as if they're a pound or two lower in press, which is why I push these inserts to 24. Somewhere I've seen a 26x4" Fat Tire rated @ 30psi but that could be wrong, it may have been a review. Glad to hear that Zip wasn't injured and shared what he learned. Happy Trail's !

 

[IOUZIP]

Tonight I got the new tire installed only to figure out almost every spoke hole was damaged when the tire exploded. The wheel had a wobble and that made me check the spokes. They are all loose and I can see the bulge where the spoke nipples pulled the rim so hard many of the holes have dimples.

 

[Uuzd4S]

Tonight I got the new tire installed only to figure out almost every spoke hole was damaged when the tire exploded. The wheel had a wobble and that made me check the spokes. They are all loose and I can see the bulge where the spoke nipples pulled the rim so hard many of the holes have dimples.

WoW, glad ur OK Dude! I was going to ask if there was more to be discovered. Again, it's valuable experience for those who are interested. And, BTW, I've NEVER overserviced my car's Air Conditioning System and had to deal with the expense of a burned out radiator fan that was forced to work overtime ; ) Happy Trails!

 

[rich c]

I don't inflate fat tires over 5psi until I know they are seated uniformly all around the rim. The are like chewing gum and often go off center when inflating. After I see they are fully seated, I never go to the max rating. At 20psi you will wear all the cleats off the tire apex first. I stop at 15psi.

 

[fooferdoggie]

I had a wheel built and when the shop put the tire on it blew off three times. at 70 psi. found out it was a fefective rim it was so loud.

 

[Merle Nelson]

Great info and perspective in this thread, thanks.

I haven't changed bike tires in decades so it gives me a feel for a few things to be careful of.

In a shop for a logging operation we inflated semi truck tires in a cage, they were happy to kill a person or take an arm off.

 

[john peck]

Tonight I got the new tire installed only to figure out almost every spoke hole was damaged when the tire exploded. The wheel had a wobble and that made me check the spokes. They are all loose and I can see the bulge where the spoke nipples pulled the rim so hard many of the holes have dimples.

Thatś a real bummer cuz the motor still works, but can´t be used on a bike. I have a motor like that.
Improperly laced spokes destroyed the spoke bores to such an extent it started losing two or three
spokes per ride. I bought a 1000w wheel kit that´s still good, but it has outlived the now parts bike.