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Home » Public Forums » GMCnet » BLOW OUT WITH ONE TON (Hard to control - NOT! A Long Learning Experience)
BLOW OUT WITH ONE TON [message #270176] Thu, 22 January 2015 22:07 Go to previous message
hal kading is currently offline  hal kading   United States
Messages: 642
Registered: February 2004
Location: Las Cruces NM
Karma:
Senior Member
A poster on Facebook implied that a front tire blow out with the One Ton conversion would be hard to handle. Our left front tire blew on the way to Chippewa Falls. We were passing another vehicle on I-35 north of Kansas City, doing about 70 mph when KA-BANGITY-BANGITY-BANGITY-BANGITY that didn't stop until we pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped. My first though was a broken drive axle or CV joint as the banging was right under my seat. One look revealed a blown tire. There were absolutely no control problems. The noise was the broken steel belt hitting the floor under my seat

Background information. After installing the GM 502, we adjusted the ride height, which took all the available adjustment on the left front torsion bar and was still not perfect. On one of the first test runs, pulling out of a service station with a steep ramp we noticed the upper aft corner of the right windshield popped out of the rubber. Later noticed the lower left windshield was coming out too. Ended up with both of them cracked and then replaced. New ones didn't fit well at all, top center of opening was displaced from bottom by 1/2" or more. Humm, I hadn't noticed that before. Later when we weighed the coach at Dothan, left front wheel was 1250 lbs more than the right front! Rear unbalance was the opposite, about 450 lbs, not near as bad, or about 12 psi difference on the suspension air pressure. Borrowed the scales and readjusted the torsion bars to within 200 lbs unbalance front left to right. Noticeable improvement in driving! When back home, more adjusting and got it to almost perfect left to right and just a lb or two difference in rear suspension air pressure. Windshield center post now lined up much better. Ride height in spec. Time and many miles pass.

About 200 or 250 miles before the blow out I noticed a high frequency vibration that seemed to be in area of left front. Checked every thing I could think of and found nothing . Drive axle bolts tight, no temps out of line, (didn't closely check tire as the vibration seemed to be too high frequency). Tire was a Goodrich Commercial TA, 6 years old, that showed no age or other distress. I'll report later how many miles it had after the overload and before it failed. I don't think age of tire had anything to do with the failure. Tire store 8 miles away had a perfect match in stock!

Total repair cost - approximately $3500. Expensive stupidity!

Hal Kading 78 Buskirk Las Cruces NM

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