Disaster narrowly averted

[Eagle]

For the past few days I have felt an odd wobbling in the '88 XJ. Not very noticeable at highway speeds, but at very slow speeds it definitely felt like the Jeep was "limping." I couldn't see anything wrong looking at it when parked, so today I jacked it up, pulled all four tires, and put on the set of BFG ATs I ws running a couple of years ago.

 

On inspection, I found a huge blister in the TREAD area of the left rear tire -- and the blistered portion was already worn completely through the tread and chewing up the cords. I'm exceedingly glad I did this today, because when I drive to work tomorrow it's a 60+ mile round trip, with about half of it highway. I seriously doubt that tire would have survived.

 

The moral of the story is -- if something feels or sounds different or "wrong," pay attention and check it out. It may be nothing, or it may be ... something.

[mm's mj]

Good advice, Eagle. Thanks for the reminder. Glad you caught it before it caught you.

[thedave360]

I had something similar happen to me in my Frontier. The tires had gotten dry rot with out me noticing, and one night heading back to the dorm the tread separated from the rest of the left rear on the interstate. It sounded like I hit something but nothing else was wrong. My truck was parked for about a week while I was at school, when I headed back home It would shake violently at highway speeds. When I stopped to check it, the inside of the tire was bulging out about to burst. I got home on the skinny spare tire and had all four changed the next day.

[Pete M]

A few years back I watched one of those bubbles burst on the van that was directly in front of me. It blew about a second after I recognized what it was. Fortunately we had just pulled from a stop light so it wasn't exactly life threatening (pretty loud though).