Pretty bad blow out with a lot of damage

[jasonator]

We have all read or seen the scattered reports of the factory 22" General Grabbers blowing out....mostly with little to no damage, however I was not so fortunate.

Pertinent info:
Speed 70-75 MPH cruise was set and going with the flow of traffic
Tread depth 6-7/32
PSI cold 41
Ambient outside temp 90-92F
Age of tire 04/23
No road hazard
No warning
Tire was bought as a replacement on EBAY 6 months ago with 8.5/32 tread as a take off replacement due to nail to close to the sidewall
No patches or plugs
Mounted and balanced perfectly
General Grabber 22" 115H load/speed index (the proper tire)

About $7k in damage. took out the bedside, blew hole into the bed space, busted up the power folding step, fender liner gone, yanked out the wires to the pro-power, my ratchet straps in the bed came out of the hole and wrapped around the axle and rubbed a wire loom raw.

When it blew, it was loud and violent, but Me thinks the majority of the damage was from the tread separating from the tire and spinning around at 70MPH flailing around and such.

I will try to logon periodically to answer questions but ill be hit or miss, so please don't be upset if it s a few days, just a busy guy.

I have a Ford rep pushing my case to up the ladder (not at my behest but in response to my FB post), but being no-one was hurt, this is clearly a TIRE issue and not a truck issue, the worst is my deductible and increased insurance rates.

FWIW I LOVE my truck. This is the 2nd one I have owned and when buying wife a new car last month we considered buying another one, but couldn't find what we wanted so we got her a loaded Mach-E Premium ER.

PS "F" Volvo and Ford For The Win!

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[astrand1]

Holy shit. That’s crazy! I’ve never heard or seen anything about these particular tires having issues blowing out. Reminds me of the firestone days with the exploders. I wonder what the date stamp on that tire was? Could it have been an older one with possible dry rot that might have not been seen?

 

[Lightning Rod]

Wow! I'm sorry to hear that and glad no one was hurt.

Man... that aluminum peels like tinfoil.

 

[jasonator]

Tire manufacturer date is 0423

A simple fast Google search of "General Grabber tires blowing out" yields a lot of results. Not just the 22's and not just F150's but these are "stock" tires for quite a few manufacturers.....

My best "guess" is being OEM tires and OEMS's trying to save coin, General in turn saved money someway/somehow in the manufacturing process. Now I am not a smart person but if you follow the trail of destruction these tires leave, you can surmise your own conclusions.

For added context, we have owned 40+ vehicles (like I said, not a smart guy) in my lifetime with dozens of tires purchases and tons of miles on most if not all our cars and aside from the occasional flat tire, we have not had 1 single blowout, l.et alone a violent occurrence such as this.

I am a bit of tire snob to boot. Quite a few of my vehicles have had high end wheels or tires or both when the time came due for replacement.

Adding in I am well educated/aware of tire health, tread depths (I have a depth gauge in the truck) inflation mins and maxes, rotations, balancing and alignments.

 

[Altivec]

Woe... that's a crazy blow out... Yeah having that happen at 75mph has got to be some kind of violent scary event. I was actually expecting way more damage than what you showed. Just glad everyone is okay, because in the end, that's all that matters.

I don't want to diminish your claim about "general grabber" tires but doing a google search on the internet with the term "General Grabber Tires blowing out" and getting results does not mean its a bad tire. I just substituted "General Grabber" with other brands such as Good Year, Michelin, etc... and got a bunch of nasty results, some with big payout law suits. When something like this happens, everyone posts their negative results. Very few ever post, I drove the entire life of a tire, changed them and all was good. The important stat to determine if the tire is bad or not is how many tires failed per 100k sold and then compare it to other tires.

I am only saying this because I am wondering if I should be alarmed or fearful of my general grabbers. Again, not to take anything away from your horrible experience, but so far, you haven't "proven" that these tires are defective, in fact, they weren't even the OEM tires. They were purchased used so I don't think it's fair to claim OEM's are cutting cost when the one tire that wasn't OEM is the one that blew up. We have no idea where these tires came from, how they were used in the past or how they were stored.

I appreciate you posting your experience and results though. Hopefully they get it all fixed up as new for you.

 

[RickLightning]

Michelin...

 

[ka-chow]

As others have said, thank goodness you were okay and everyone involved! That definitely could have been a lot worse! Definitely not great for the truck, sadly.

 

[MountainAlive]

You’re the second Lightning I’ve see n report this recently. The other one was on a Facebook group and nearly the same thing as yours. Same Grabber tires too, completely delaminated and the tread flew off at high speeds.

 

[jamelski]

Sorry this happened to you. I have put many used tires on cars and trucks but I only buy Michelin.

 

[djryan13]

One of my Generals developed a large (8”) swelling on the side at 30k. Only noticed because of vibration. Just replaced all 4 with the Michelins and my mileage sank dramatically (10%). Sigh….

 

[MountainAlive]

One of my Generals developed a large (8”) swelling on the side at 30k. Only noticed because of vibration. Just replaced all 4 with the Michelins and my mileage sank dramatically (10%). Sigh….

The OEM Goodyear Wrangler’s mine came with have been pretty good in my opinion. EV rated and I’m almost at 30k miles on them.

 

[oldman_74]

Wow! that's a lot of damage from a blowout, I am happy to hear no one was injured. Hop you have good insurance and low deducible.

 

[TwentyTwentyThree]

@jasonator thank you for posting. Your post made me want to check my spare tire pressure. And it was low!

 

[chl]

Wow, glad no personal injuries!

My 2023 Pro came with Michelin tires, (Michelin BSW 275/65R18) but any tire can have a blow-out under the wrong circumstances.

So much damage from a blow-out is crazy!
I've had a few blow-outs in my 50 years of driving but never resulting in damage to the vehicle anything like that.

The extensive damage seems to be a result of the structural in the tread for the 115H load rating, i.e., the high tensile steel belts which pack a punch when they let loose in a blow-out.

There should be some OEM structural mitigation when providing high load handling tires on a pickup truck, like wheel well liners, eh?

https://www.ford.com/product/wheelw...IL_3vM2S0xC4RMwUVu1yd0KcHWHXVOnqxFBb84yPo77Ei


Maybe those would help if they made them for the Lightning - these do not fit the Lightning.

Supposedly some trims came with liners, but people said they were rather flimsy.

 

[chl]

PS: all that exposed wiring under the truck, for the PPOB etc, worries me, vulnerable to road debris and now we also know steel belts from a tire blow out.

It did not look like it would be easy to relocate the wiring higher up and out of the way when I was under there wiring up bed lights, but some kind of metal plate might be fashioned to cover as much as possible.

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