Tire overheating in the desert.

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
41

No, it was part of Syldavia space program. Snowy just talks to himself and gives a running commentary to the reader, but he is a clever little dog.

The exploding tires were mistaken for gunshots on a quiet street, IIRC in Sever Crystal Balls, not The Shooting Star. During the day time.

My point being, if it was included in a story it was possibly not an unheard-of occurence at the time if you were not careful with your tire pressure?

I did see a moron at a gas station once inflate his bicycle tire to 100psi (? The max on the air hose), at which point it exploded. Not sure what limits a car tire handles, years ago and now. “Now” is probably better manufacture than years ago. If the tire is overinflated to begin with and has a weak spot, failure could happen. OTOH, we don’t hear of wild epidemics of dead tires in the southwest, so I suspect the problem is not significant.

PV=nRT, the ideal gas law. A tire going from 20C to 100C (boiling) is going from 293K to 373K. V-volume, and n-amount of gas, stay the same; pressure should increase about 30%. Tire failure is less likely to occur from overpressure as from sidewall failure, I imagine. After all, the quickest route to blowout is underinflation which flexes and overheats the sidewall.

The only wild card is liquid water in the tire going to gas, which could cause a huge increase in pressure…

42

The point is, none of this is evidence that road temperatures have ever risen to 200 degrees, let alone easily exceeded them, which was the claim in the OP. Nobody here is claiming that tires have never exploded.

43

Here’s a link to a relevant research paper. They measured the surface temperature of an asphalt parking lot at the campus of Arizona State. The highest asphalt surface temperature they recorded, during the study period, was 149F. (Note - the study was only conducted from March through June - so they may have missed the hotest part of the year)

44

In the 1930s, tires had inner tubes that were often patched. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that they occasionally burst.

45

Please see post #42.

46

Yet another thread where the OP is a single poster who went to all the trouble of registering an account to post their worthless “facts”. It’s sad really. :frowning: