Towmax blowout 2 days ago

[TravelTiger]

This is a good lesson, never listen to the tire man at the counter.

Let's see, if this salesman sells you 4 new TowMax, what are the chances you'll be back buying 4 new something else in the next 2 years?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jamersons]

Well, we joined the blowmax family today, and was actually expecting it and prepared for it after reading everyone else's problems. We were blessed that the blowout occurred on a decent stretch of road where we could actually pull over. We were traveling small Farm To Market roads with no shoulders all morning, and I just knew if it was going to happen, it'd be somewhere that I'd have to just stop on the road. Goodyears getting put on in the morning, now I'm just questioning whether to go with the G614's or Endurance. Decisions, decisions.

 

[tireman9]

Well, we joined the blowmax family today, and was actually expecting it and prepared for it after reading everyone else's problems. We were blessed that the blowout occurred on a decent stretch of road where we could actually pull over. We were traveling small Farm To Market roads with no shoulders all morning, and I just knew if it was going to happen, it'd be somewhere that I'd have to just stop on the road. Goodyears getting put on in the morning, now I'm just questioning whether to go with the G614's or Endurance. Decisions, decisions.
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That appears to be a "Belt/tread separation" not a "Run Low Flex sidewall failure". Belt seps can usually be discovered before they come apart by doing a thorough "free spin" inspection as outlined in my blog.
Don't forget to file a complaint with NHTSA.

 

[Bones]

I'm not going to try to be rude but there is no excuse for a crappy tire. If a brand appears to constantly fail at some point maybe there is a problem with how the tire is made. The point is the tires are crap and we need to let as many people know about these tires as best as we can so that they don't have this happen to them. There is no excuse whether it be belt separation run low or pothole or curb or what ever there seems to be that the manufacture of these things comes up with.

 

[tireman9]

I'm not going to try to be rude but there is no excuse for a crappy tire. If a brand appears to constantly fail at some point maybe there is a problem with how the tire is made. The point is the tires are crap and we need to let as many people know about these tires as best as we can so that they don't have this happen to them. There is no excuse whether it be belt separation run low or pothole or curb or what ever there seems to be that the manufacture of these things comes up with.

I agree that it appears that some tires may not have the same quality as others.

BUT

The solution is not to complain while sitting around the campfire or with posts on an RV forum. If you really want to impact tire quality you need to establish the facts that a specific batch of tires was actually defective. Simply having a tire fail is no more proof the tire was defective than pointing to a dead person and claim there was a murder.

I do not know how having a tire fail with a run low flex failure because the air leaked out while the vehicle continued down the road is the "fault" of the tire or tire company. Air loss does not always involve the tire as in the case of a puncture or driving over a curb or across a deep pot hole. Why would you blame the tire if the bolt in valve was not properly installed as covered in THIS post, so there was a leak around the valve body. If you have a leaking valve core as I identified in THIS post why would you blame the tire quality?

Hopefully you now agree that it is important to understand the "why" a tire failed if you want to have a hope of addressing the cause of the failure.

Belt/tread separations are different if you care about making an accurate claim of questionable quality. The best step is to file a complaint with NHTSA. You can still file a warranty claim with the tire dealer and write a letter to the rV company if that makes you feel better. You can even let them know you have filed a complaint with NHTSA so they know you are serious.
You MUST provide the full DOT serial to NHTSA to have any chance of having the complaint taken seriously as without the S/N they can not properly identify if there is a series of tires from the same batch so the failure rate is higher than normal. NHTSA can accumulate the actionable complaints and if there is sufficient number they may start an investigation. If that finds probable cause they might take the next step and there may even be a recall.
I have never heard os a recall being made because people wrote about their problems on an RV forum.

There is no such thing as a "fail proof" tire as any tire can be made to fail in less than 15 minutes, so again simply having a failure is not really "proof" of low quality.

 

[Bones]

I agree that it appears that some tires may not have the same quality as others.

BUT

The solution is not to complain while sitting around the campfire or with posts on an RV forum. If you really want to impact tire quality you need to establish the facts that a specific batch of tires was actually defective. Simply having a tire fail is no more proof the tire was defective than pointing to a dead person and claim there was a murder.

I do not know how having a tire fail with a run low flex failure because the air leaked out while the vehicle continued down the road is the "fault" of the tire or tire company. Air loss does not always involve the tire as in the case of a puncture or driving over a curb or across a deep pot hole. Why would you blame the tire if the bolt in valve was not properly installed as covered in THIS post, so there was a leak around the valve body. If you have a leaking valve core as I identified in THIS post why would you blame the tire quality?

Hopefully you now agree that it is important to understand the "why" a tire failed if you want to have a hope of addressing the cause of the failure.

Belt/tread separations are different if you care about making an accurate claim of questionable quality. The best step is to file a complaint with NHTSA. You can still file a warranty claim with the tire dealer and write a letter to the rV company if that makes you feel better. You can even let them know you have filed a complaint with NHTSA so they know you are serious.
You MUST provide the full DOT serial to NHTSA to have any chance of having the complaint taken seriously as without the S/N they can not properly identify if there is a series of tires from the same batch so the failure rate is higher than normal. NHTSA can accumulate the actionable complaints and if there is sufficient number they may start an investigation. If that finds probable cause they might take the next step and there may even be a recall.
I have never heard os a recall being made because people wrote about their problems on an RV forum.

There is no such thing as a "fail proof" tire as any tire can be made to fail in less than 15 minutes, so again simply having a failure is not really "proof" of low quality.

I'm not sure if you are here to defend the tires or not. A tire in my opinion that does not hold up is going to fail no matter what excuse you can come up with on why it failed.

 

[fastcarsspeed]

I think people have to be careful making blanket statements. I am not a fan of the tires at all as I just had a blowout on our new to us Cyclone. But my outback toy hauler that I just sold which was a TT and very light had that brand tire and they were fine for 5 years until they needed to be replaced. I think their weight rating are wrong and the composition of the tire for large 5th wheels is where we have an issue.

 

[jakoenig1]

I think people have to be careful making blanket statements. I am not a fan of the tires at all as I just had a blowout on our new to us Cyclone. But my outback toy hauler that I just sold which was a TT and very light had that brand tire and they were fine for 5 years until they needed to be replaced. I think their weight rating are wrong and the composition of the tire for large 5th wheels is where we have an issue.

What size tire was on your outback? My nephew had a small toy hauler and it came with D15 tires. These are bias ply tires and do not have tread separation issues like radial tires. I had D15 tires on my boat trailer and they were 18 years old when I replaced them ( made in China). I just didn't trust them to go on a long trip. Bias ply tires were on all pre 1970 US cars. They have higher wear rates and poor fuel economy but tread separation was seldom a problem.

 

[JohnD]

We had BlowMax tires on our 2013 Heartland Trail Runner bumper pull trailer and NEVER had an issue with them, but after reading all of the horror stories about them I always worried about a blowout every time we hit the road!

I think that the BlowMax tires might be fine on the lighter weight bumper pulls . . . but a big NoNo on the heavier 5th-wheelers!

Our 2015 Heartland Prowler P292 had BlowMax tires on it at the dealership, but since we had just upgraded the axles, wheels and tires on the Trail Runner one week before we traded it in for our 2015 Prowler, and the tires (HiRun) were the same size and weight rating, we opted to have them swapped out to replace the BlowMax tires that came from the Heartland factory.

So, Heartland, putting these crap tires on your finished product has no meaning!

There is nothing you can say or do to fix this.

We discovered one of the HiRun tires starting to separate on our way home from the 2016 National Heartland Owners Club Rally in Las Vegas, NV and now am looking to upgrade tires soon.

Looking at the Maxxis 2008's . . .

 

[tireman9]

I'm not sure if you are here to defend the tires or not. A tire in my opinion that does not hold up is going to fail no matter what excuse you can come up with on why it failed.

I am not trying to "defend" tires that were not designed or manufactured with quality in mind but had a focus on low cost.

My point is that simply claiming that every failure is the fault of bad design or of bad manufacturing can not be backed up or established with facts. There are a variety of reasons for any individual tire to fail so trying to claim that all failures are the result of the same mistake just isn't realistic, despite what "ambulance chasing" lawyers may try and imply in TV commercials.
Failures of tires or of any product, do not occur because of some magic spell. Engineers experienced in forensic examination and failure analysis can find the Root Cause for the failure. Using the knowledge gained by such examination continual improvements can be made

This scientific approach has been used for centuries to develop new and improved products and processes. Many people however seem to want to take the simple approach such as what happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago and simply declare Magic, bad spirits or similar are the reasons something didn't work as wanted.

You are more than welcome to think that all failures are caused by an almost infinite number of random manufacturing defects. I and others with real scientific curiosity and understand proper investigative methods will continue to offer our knowledge to those who want to know the truth.

Have a good time with your RV.

 

[Bones]

I am not trying to "defend" tires that were not designed or manufactured with quality in mind but had a focus on low cost.

My point is that simply claiming that every failure is the fault of bad design or of bad manufacturing can not be backed up or established with facts. There are a variety of reasons for any individual tire to fail so trying to claim that all failures are the result of the same mistake just isn't realistic, despite what "ambulance chasing" lawyers may try and imply in TV commercials.
Failures of tires or of any product, do not occur because of some magic spell. Engineers experienced in forensic examination and failure analysis can find the Root Cause for the failure. Using the knowledge gained by such examination continual improvements can be made

This scientific approach has been used for centuries to develop new and improved products and processes. Many people however seem to want to take the simple approach such as what happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago and simply declare Magic, bad spirits or similar are the reasons something didn't work as wanted.

You are more than welcome to think that all failures are caused by an almost infinite number of random manufacturing defects. I and others with real scientific curiosity and understand proper investigative methods will continue to offer our knowledge to those who want to know the truth.

Have a good time with your RV.

In my opinion, I'm sorry but failures of a product for which it is suppose to be rated for no matter what the failure is, if constant, constitutes a bad engineering job. I would have been interested if this would have been a one time, two time or so as to what caused the failure, however a failure that appears to happen quite often to a particular brand of tire when used as it is rated constitutes a bad tire. The information on here about how well these tires fail and the fact the manufacture has moved for the most part away from this particular brand of tire means something. I do like to know how a product fails and do believe it to be valuable information however over time if you are constantly hearing of failure from a particular brand when used as it is suppose to be used the reasons for failure start to get lost in the noise and eventually it no longer matters as to why it fails and becomes a matter of how long before this tire fails and takes out the whole side of my rig. In my opinion this tire is a very bad design for heavy rig use and may well in fact be a good tire for light rig use. If you go out in the world and use a product and it starts to fail no matter why it fails eventually that product will disappear.

Oh by the way I think the Tire Gods may have something to say as well or maybe the Eye in the sky that sees everything. You know Dumbledore might be able to protect me or was that Sir Lancelot.

 

[SNOKING]

When you take a tire type that was designed for local service on utility type trailers, manufacture them in a environment with low quality control, and build them at a rock bottom price, then the BlowMAX name is well deserving when installed on large trailers that spend a lot of time at freeway speeds.

I also believe and have posted many times that the A/S style tread on most ST tires creates too much grip on the pavement in tight turns, causing the tire to rip it's self apart.

Chris

 

[TopsRV2]

Well, after reading through the 188+ posts over the last few days there was quite a bit of valuable information on tires, obvious the Towmax (Blomax) brand.
But, I just purchased a 2017 Heartland Mallard M312 with Westlake 225/75R15 E/10ply, 80 psi good for 2830 lbs and dated 4016 sitting on 4,830 lb tandem axles. I'm looking for any type of feedback that's out there on these tires if possible? I'm hearing all types of great information on the Maxxis 8008 tires and I'm considering changing these fairly new Westlakes out to these Maxxis just to prevent a blow out, but I'm trying to gather as much factual, valuable information first prior to making this final decision. So what can any of ya'll help me out with here?
I'm going to check out a few other posts/threads on tires on this Heartland Owners Forums, but figured I'd start with this very long one to see if anyone has any feedback here first.
Thanks for any input!

 

[tireman9]

Well, after reading through the 188+ posts over the last few days there was quite a bit of valuable information on tires, obvious the Towmax (Blomax) brand.
But, I just purchased a 2017 Heartland Mallard M312 with Westlake 225/75R15 E/10ply, 80 psi good for 2830 lbs and dated 4016 sitting on 4,830 lb tandem axles. I'm looking for any type of feedback that's out there on these tires if possible? I'm hearing all types of great information on the Maxxis 8008 tires and I'm considering changing these fairly new Westlakes out to these Maxxis just to prevent a blow out, but I'm trying to gather as much factual, valuable information first prior to making this final decision. So what can any of ya'll help me out with here?
I'm going to check out a few other posts/threads on tires on this Heartland Owners Forums, but figured I'd start with this very long one to see if anyone has any feedback here first.
Thanks for any input!

You need to learn the actual load on the axles when fully loaded. Just because you have 5,000# axles doesn't mean you have only 5,000 load on them. When measured over half the RVs out there have one or more tire and/or axle in overload.

 

[jleavitt11]

You need to learn the actual load on the axles when fully loaded. Just because you have 5,000# axles doesn't mean you have only 5,000 load on them. When measured over half the RVs out there have one or more tire and/or axle in overload.

Help me out. What document or reference are you getting the information from when you say half or RVs have one or more tires and or axles in overload.

 

[TopsRV2]

You need to learn the actual load on the axles when fully loaded. Just because you have 5,000# axles doesn't mean you have only 5,000 load on them. When measured over half the RVs out there have one or more tire and/or axle in overload.

I fully understand that. Every time I change a load plan I hit the scales and at a minimum have each axle of my trailer and TV weighed. Often I'll even have each individual hub weighed so I know exactly how much weight is on each individual wheel at a time.

 

[tireman9]

You need to learn the actual load on the axles when fully loaded. Just because you have 5,000# axles doesn't mean you have only 5,000 load on them. When measured over half the RVs out there have one or more tire and/or axle in overload.

Help me out. What document or reference are you getting the information from when you say half or RVs have one or more tires and or axles in overload.

RVSEF has weighed over 25,000 RV. In their presentations at RV Conventions they show summary of results with different typs of RVs having various % reported as being overloaded based on scale readings of individual tire positions (not just axle weights as at a truck stop scale)
The % with one or more tire or the axle exceeding GAWR range from 51% to 59% as I recall from last time I watched a presentation.

I believe it is reasonable to extrapolate that if the group of RV owners that care enough to pay to learn their actual weights is that poor then in the general population where many have no idea that inflation is important or what it should be is at least that poor.

 

[jakoenig1]

RVSEF has weighed over 25,000 RV. In their presentations at RV Conventions they show summary of results with different typs of RVs having various % reported as being overloaded based on scale readings of individual tire positions (not just axle weights as at a truck stop scale)
The % with one or more tire or the axle exceeding GAWR range from 51% to 59% as I recall from last time I watched a presentation.

I believe it is reasonable to extrapolate that if the group of RV owners that care enough to pay to learn their actual weights is that poor then in the general population where many have no idea that inflation is important or what it should be is at least that poor.

I find it very hard to believe that over 50% of RV manufacturers are selling RV's with one or more tire overloaded. To me, the RVSEF looks like a mouthpiece for the tire manufacturers putting out more BS on why tire failures are our fault. By design, if a trailer is level, the front and rear tire on the same side has to have the same load. If the trailer is way out of level, this is not true but most trailers I have seen are pretty level. The pivot for the spring shackles between axles is there to equalize the loads to both axles, and distribute forces from bumps to both tires as it pivots. Yes, all trailers have side to side differences based on placement of appliances and storage. If there is a significant difference between the front and rear tire, the pivot has to be frozen or the trailer is way out of level front to rear.

 

[avvidclif]

I find it very hard to believe that over 50% of RV manufacturers are selling RV's with one or more tire overloaded. To me, the RVSEF looks like a mouthpiece for the tire manufacturers putting out more BS on why tire failures are our fault. By design, if a trailer is level, the front and rear tire on the same side has to have the same load. If the trailer is way out of level, this is not true but most trailers I have seen are pretty level. The pivot for the spring shackles between axles is there to equalize the loads to both axles, and distribute forces from bumps to both tires as it pivots. Yes, all trailers have side to side differences based on placement of appliances and storage. If there is a significant difference between the front and rear tire, the pivot has to be frozen or the trailer is way out of level front to rear.

He's not talking about the same side tires. He's referring to 2 tires on one axle and the weight is not even between the 2. IE: the left front tire is overloaded and the right front is not, but the load on the axle may be under the combined carrying capacity of the 2 tires.

 

[jakoenig1]

He's not talking about the same side tires. He's referring to 2 tires on one axle and the weight is not even between the 2. IE: the left front tire is overloaded and the right front is not, but the load on the axle may be under the combined carrying capacity of the 2 tires.

ok, lets do some math to show how ridiculous this statement is. My trailer has a combined 4 tire weight of 11,200 pounds on the axles. The Towmax tires are rated at 3520 pounds per tire. For the left side to be overloaded, it has to weigh 7,040 pounds. That means the right side would have to weigh 4,160 pounds. Do you really believe that one side of my trailer weighs 2,880 pounds more than the other side? I would bet it is significantly less than 1,000 pounds. That means the left side might have 3050 lbs per tire and the right side 2,550 lbs per tire, well within the 3,520 lb rating. I have failed three left and one right tire. I attribute this to running LT Michelin's on the right side after the first Towmax tire failure. No failures on the Michelins in 8,000 miles and three Towmax failures and one Gladiator failure in 8,000 miles. My rear truck tires carry 3,400 pounds for 30,000 miles without failure before replacement. They wear out in 30,000 miles due to the heavy load and high torque. I have worn out two sets of rear tires without a tire failure. Sure sounds like an ST tire quality problem to me.