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Goodyear Marathon Trailer tires explosions
I wanted to pass along so info. in hope that this does not happen to you. I had a Marathon trailer tire blow up while parked about 3 weeks ago. I assumed that I had run over something and the tire blew out while on the road. I replaced it thinking nothing more of it as I have had these tires on the trailer for 11 years and it just gave out. Yesterday I heard a very loud explosion outside and ran out to see what happened. I could not find anything and figured it was a car back fire or something like that. I went to move my trailer to park it and noticed that a tire had exploded. I had recently checked the tire pressure a day or so before and set them at 42 psi. 50 is max. I immediately wondered if the tires had gone bad and checked the remaining two. Sure enough, one tire showed a bulge and tearing of the rubber on the tread and the other was starting to. I immeadiately let the pressue out of both tires. If one of these tires had blown up when one of my children, wife, or dogs was standing near them in my driveway, they or I could have been seriously injured or worse. I sent an email to Goodyear about the incident to alert them to a potential safety hazard. If you have Goodyear Marathon trailer tires, you may want to keep an eye on them. I honestly think that after 11 years, the tire belts deteriorated and let loose. I did not usually use the trailer much until this year. That is why the tires are so old and they still had over 90% of their tread left. At $90 a piece I expected to get more mileage than that out of them, but 11 years is a long time. I replaced them with Taskmaster trailer tires. Anyway, they were great tires up until very recently! Just be careful around them if they are very old.
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Goodyear Marathon Trailer tires explosions
Chief, are you sure those tires are rated for the load you carry on your trailer? It sounds like they may have been overloaded, overheated, and then separated. There are a lot of trailer manufacturers around and it wouldn't surprise me to find that some of them put tires on that won't carry a full rated load. If you have a weighmaster somewhere close by it may be worth loading up the trailer and taking it down to have it weighed just to be sure. I've seen full size work vans pop tires and we had to go from the OEM 8 ply to a full 12 ply to carry the load. 8 plys were fine for moderate loads but these guys carried lots of pipe and metal plumbing parts and were just too heavy for the factory tires (probably too heavy for the van, too, but that's another issue).
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Goodyear Marathon Trailer tires explosions
I leave the pressures in my occasionally used trailer tires pretty high and I have wondered how high the pressure may go on hot sunny days. I suspect that it'd be better to let it sit with low pressures and then top them up for the load I'm going to carry. No real need to run near max pressures for light loads. It would even be better for me to keep them out of the sun.
I don't know what type of belts the old tires had. This summer there was a lot of blasting along the highway near our camp. We got a few chunks of old tires form the blasting mats in our yard. Most were steel belted and I remember noticing that the exposed belting seemed rusted. Huge amounts of salt are used on the highways around here. I don't know if that's an issue for old steel belted tires, and I don't know the life of an old tire used in a blasting mat. Something to think about.
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Goodyear Marathon Trailer tires explosions
If you are going to blow a trailer tire, sitting in the yard is as good a place as any.
I blew one last month on I-5 in the middle of Oregon doing 65 with a brand new tractor on the trailer. The tread blew off and wrapped around the axle and then caught fire.
Close examination showed the remaining three tires all had lumps and bumps that looked like imminent tread separation.
They were some sort of bias ply no-name third world brand that I hadn't ever heard of and cannot now remember, but you can bet they all went in the garbage.I have no doubt that I overstressed my tires by running a couple of loads that were too heavy and not keeping the inflation pressures up.
It was a scary feeling to leave a brand new T/L/B on the side of the road at 5 AM.
If one tire shows signs of trouble, I would replace them all, especially considering the age of the tires.
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Goodyear Marathon Trailer tires explosions
Great minds think alike Mark!  That is exactly what I did yesterday. That is exactly what I did yesterday. I installed four brand new Taskmaster 205-75D-15 tires yesterday. I got them mounted at Walmart for $3.50 each. The remaining tires showed signs of impend tread separation. No way I am spending $90 a piece for Marathon trailer tires again. Trailer tires set too much and will dry rot before you wear them out. Can't beat the Taskmasters for less than $30 a piece! I wouldn't feel nearly so bad about chucking them in the trash. These tires come standard on Ja-Mar trailers so they can't be that bad.
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Goodyear Marathon Trailer tires explosions
Last night on ABC news they did a piece on tire explosions. The bottom line seems to be that "experts" are saying that tires should have expiration dates.
They said tires need to be mounted before they are six years old or thrown away. If the tires are already mounted and are eight to ten years old (depending on which expert) they are no longer safe and could suffer tread separation even if there is little or no tread wear.
They predicted that we will see a rules for determining the shelf life for tires in the next few years and the days of buying/selling used tires will be over.
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Goodyear Marathon Trailer tires explosions
Chief -
I replaced my tires last year WITH GoodYear's like you said at about $90 a pop. My previous tires, were exhibiting the exact failure as was seen on the Ford Explorer's with tread separation etc.(and were firestone/bridgestone's). I contacted the manufacturer about this dilemma- they promptly refused to accept any acknowledgement of these tires! I wasn't expecting much, but I did plan on at least a reply of good nature. Certainly worth watching the tires more closely.
- Willie H.
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Goodyear Marathon Trailer tires explosions
Willie or any of the rest of you that are interested; these are the tires I replace the badyear marabomb tires with. They are VERY good tires and wheels at a VERY good price. In fact these are the tires that come standard on Ja-Mar trailers. I went with the bias ply tires.
Link:
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