Well, it may not be that bad, or that permanent, but tonight I got a real serious wakeup call while replacing a tire on my 1964 Schwinn "Rat Racer".
I had these cheap IRC (Indonesia Rubber Co.) tires on it, and always had problems with beads. Finally a rear blew partly off the rim and tore the bead. All I could find locally was a pair of S-6 gumwalls, so I bought those for a Breeze I'm restoring, and took an old original blackwall tire from one of the rims.
The tire was kind of hard, but seemed solid. Had some typical cracking and crumblies around the bead but nothing unusual. A new Bell tube (yeah they're cheap...) and it mounted up fine. Filled it up, checked the fit on the rim, and put it up to about 50 psi with my compressor.
One more bump of the air hose trigger and BOOM!
Sidewall of the tread blew out about a foot from my face. I only heard half the pop. The shredded ends of the tube were hanging out of the tire along with a flap and broken, rusty bead wires.
I felt like I was underwater, or had earmuffs on, or if you were to just put your hands over your ears. All high frequencies gone except for ringing. Some low and medium-low frequencies like speech and engine noises are very amplified. The shockwave from the blowout really stunned me. My wife came running out when she heard the sound, inside with the windows closed. I could barely hear her calling me.
Now, I wear hearing protection at work, and the effect is nothing like what I experienced from this. The amplification thing is confusing and worrisome. It's been about 7 hours now, and most of it has returned to normal, or close to it. I may have gotten very lucky here to be able to hear ANYTHING now. I cannot imagine being close to something truly loud like a bomb blast, a military shell, a grenade, or anything like that.
I hope that nothing permanent comes of this. I've started having a little high-frequency loss in my right ear, picked up by hearing tests at work. I think this will hasten that demise unfortunately.
Moral of the story is to always be careful, and perhaps to not be cheap to the point that you put yourself at risk. Though I will say, what I was doing was nothing different than what I've done dozens of times. This time, with a bad tire and hidden fatigue or rust , I paid a price that's a lot more than a $12 tire.
--Rob
I had these cheap IRC (Indonesia Rubber Co.) tires on it, and always had problems with beads. Finally a rear blew partly off the rim and tore the bead. All I could find locally was a pair of S-6 gumwalls, so I bought those for a Breeze I'm restoring, and took an old original blackwall tire from one of the rims.
The tire was kind of hard, but seemed solid. Had some typical cracking and crumblies around the bead but nothing unusual. A new Bell tube (yeah they're cheap...) and it mounted up fine. Filled it up, checked the fit on the rim, and put it up to about 50 psi with my compressor.
One more bump of the air hose trigger and BOOM!
Sidewall of the tread blew out about a foot from my face. I only heard half the pop. The shredded ends of the tube were hanging out of the tire along with a flap and broken, rusty bead wires.
I felt like I was underwater, or had earmuffs on, or if you were to just put your hands over your ears. All high frequencies gone except for ringing. Some low and medium-low frequencies like speech and engine noises are very amplified. The shockwave from the blowout really stunned me. My wife came running out when she heard the sound, inside with the windows closed. I could barely hear her calling me.
Now, I wear hearing protection at work, and the effect is nothing like what I experienced from this. The amplification thing is confusing and worrisome. It's been about 7 hours now, and most of it has returned to normal, or close to it. I may have gotten very lucky here to be able to hear ANYTHING now. I cannot imagine being close to something truly loud like a bomb blast, a military shell, a grenade, or anything like that.
I hope that nothing permanent comes of this. I've started having a little high-frequency loss in my right ear, picked up by hearing tests at work. I think this will hasten that demise unfortunately.
Moral of the story is to always be careful, and perhaps to not be cheap to the point that you put yourself at risk. Though I will say, what I was doing was nothing different than what I've done dozens of times. This time, with a bad tire and hidden fatigue or rust , I paid a price that's a lot more than a $12 tire.
--Rob
