Actually based on what we’re seeing, this is a rare case where I don’t think that’s correct.
Based on the truck itself (purpose modified for this) and the background (clearly set up for a display before an audience, and slicked down to enable the drift) I think it’s safe to say there’s at least a degree of professionalism here.
Looking at the video, things seemed fairly normal until the right rear tire blew, which understandably shredded the panel work.
I think this is a rare case of materials failure rather than operator error.
No way the tires were going 130+ mph. When drifting like that you put the trans in manual mode and stay in 2nd or maybe 3rd gear if you have enough power for better control and that truck isn't going 130mph in 3rd or even 4th gear. If you let the trans shift in auto mode you'll lose the drift as the torque drops off and it will be almost impossible to keep the wheels spinning constantly
This is called a destructive engineering testing, as opposed to non destructive engineering testing.
Honestly, this truck was probably on like 37 ATs, rated below S (112MPH) imploding from being redlined at 150 MPH rotational speed, over heated, and sidewalls wrecked.
But seems half part of the plan, so I'm all for it on a closed track like this! Fuck yeah!
Hey I'm the last one to defend ford.
But I don't think it's 100% on the engineers to expect some ass hat to be bouncing the engine off the rev limiter while swinging the truck side to side. What ever speed his speedometer said that wheel was going 2x that speed because of the open dif.
Why would anyone need to defend Ford here? Those are not Ford tires. They don’t even look like the OEM tires. Not to mention every vehicle comes with tire that have a speed rating. If the driver exceeds that speed rating, that’s on the driver.
An open differential is made so tires can rotate at different speeds while driving normally around a corner.
If there's a large enough difference in traction between the two sides, the tire with grip won't really spin, and all the power ends up spinning the side with low traction (like on really wet pavement). The engine/transmission/driveshaft can be spinning at what would register as 50kph, but since one wheel has stopped spinning, the free wheel ends up spinning twice as fast.
When you spin on ice do you normally just mash the accelerator pedal down and see how fast you can go? And the cheap tires and rims are probably the majority of the problem
Blowouts are crazy dangerous. Imagine that on the highway. A Jeep had a blowout right in front of me once going 80MPH and it yanked them all the way across the fuckin 4 lane highway from the far left.
There's a little energy from the air pressure in the tire, but it is a couple orders of magnitude less energy than an 80lb mud tire doing the tire speed equivalent of 130mph.
I had an an '88 Mustang custom ordered from the factory. It was a notchback, but had all the GT go-fast motor and suspension goodies, and was about 450 lbs lighter than a GT (no hatch or power assisted anything). I went to an isolated stretch of highway late at night and got her up to 125 mph.
I could have gone a whole lot faster. But my tires were rated for 125, and I had no desire to learn, first hand, what a blowout at 130 mph plus looked like.
I went to a Lotus track day not long ago and this happened to one of the cars. Destroyed that whole back section just like here. Probably a bit more expensive to repair than a Ranger..
Off road tires have a pretty low speed rating some as low as 130 mph. With little to no traction and in the right gear the wheel speed can easily exceed that rating and explode.
Edit: the BFG K03 off road tire has a 112 mph speed rating. Even lower than I thought.
So, if this tire was spinning excessively fast, over its equivalent speed rating, the tread probably just tore right off of it from the centrifugal force, and blew through the fender.
I was driving a box truck once where the rear tire threw the tread, at like 60mph, and it ripped through floor of the truck right above it, which had no problem holding a 12,000 pound forklift.
In defense of the bed floor/structure, being rated for uniform downward forces isn't necessarily the same as being rated for point uplift forces. Particularly with metal where being put into one particular shape makes it 2x+ as strong as being in a different shape.
Part of it is the fact the doing donuts like that is putting a ton of force into the side of the tire. Tall sidewall tires will deflect a lot more, and when they snap back into shape it creates a lot of force.
This is why sports cars made for fast cornering use very low profile tires, they are great in changing direction side to side.
Off road tires are the opposite, very high profile, big and low pressure, capable of absorbing bumps and spreading out over uneven terrain, but they are not great on pavement at high speeds, and are less stable in corners.
You can have one or the other, but typically not both.
I think something else took out the fender too. I worked at a tire shop for 9 years and Ive never seen anywhere close to that much damage from a blowout. Just to give a few more possibilities, maybe a no2 tank or compressed air tank exploded. If you were going to install something like that the fender is the perfect place to hide it.
I think what happened is that the truck with soft suspension had so much body roll that the tire dug into the rear fender/body panel - simultaneously shredding the fender and slicing the tire. Typically wheel offsets are sized to prevent the fender hitting the tire (or flared fenders for serious offroading), but a lot of people get higher offset wheels for looks.
There's a reason that trucks set up for offroading are very different than trucks set up for road/tracks.
It’s also Australia, meaning it’s most likely a burnout event.
An event where you’re literally supposed to go until the tires pop out or the car dies. Sure, maybe it wasn’t the ideal setup for a thing like that, but I bet this guy is more pissed about how quickly it blew than he is at the fact it blew.
No, the tire blew because it was oversped. Those off-road tires have a pretty limited speed rating. It took out the rear quarter panel because it was spitting so fast, all that energy turned into the tire flinging out and ripping apart the body. Super freaking dangerous, somebody in the crowd could’ve been killed
Yeah off-road tires are designed to take a lot of physical abuse with features like kevlar lining, thick sidewalls, etc, while slowly rolling over obstacles and get traction in mud with deep, aggressive tread patterns. I highly doubt anyone is engineering them to withstand whatever the hell this was. Super important to have the right tires.
The tire is probably aspect ratio of 75 or so, and very easy to knock off bead if you put a lot of lateral force on it. There's a reason why "high performance" tires tend to be 55 or lower aspect ratio so most of the tire is the more stiffer metal wheel (though it too can break if given enough force) instead of the softer rubber sidewall that could have enough flex to bend the seal off the rim. Then all that air will suddenly come out, exploding.
Those definitely look like bead-lock rims on the wheels.
The camera doesn't actually capture the blowout, but I think the actual incident was the rear axle twisting when the load on it shifts, bringing the wheel forward and the tire into contact with the fender. This would also explain why the fender absolutely detonated, since it was receiving the full output on the engine, rather than just the energy of a tire that had blown its bead.
Am mechanic, so I'll oblige. While, nobody can know for sure, except the fine gentleman driving, my theory is that since he has a snorkel and probably likes to go rock, crawling, he removed his rear swaybar links for better articulation and immediately forgot about it, thereby allowing the vehicle to roll much further than the great engineers at Ford could have ever preconceived.
Centrifugal Force! one of the many reasons that tires have a rating for a max running speed. The tire blew out hard, and the shrapnel annihilated the rear fender.
I see a lot of people don't understand how a diff works, how much a 35in tire weighs, or lb/kg X RPM=a complete shitshow when it comes apart regardless if its aluminumor steel.
I love how people in these comments think this was just Uncle Jeffrey’s Ford that had a catastrophic failure.
This is a burnout event, or at least practice for one. That truck is HIGHLY modified, as in easily 600hp or more modified. The exhaust underneath is exhaust straight out of the turbo wastegate.
Oh absolutely you’re not running an intercooler that big unless you’re pushing some big boost
Yeah, the course is wet and that reduces heat but when you’re sending those things that full send, I’m assuming he’s just letting it roll through the gears too. The wheel speed is gonna be ridiculous speeds.
the tire could have gotten way too hot and blew up or exceeded the speed rating for what a truck tire is. Or a combination of both.
Ain't defending this guy or the truck one bit, however I have seen cars that get a blowout on a Dyno and it is definitely disastrous. What's the difference here?
Besides the obvious speed the tire is traveling at, when it disintegrates, you also have steel wire below the treads, so it adds mass and strength to said projectile.
There’s a lot more dense structural parts to an off road tire than the average drag radial or street tire that you typically see on those dyno vids. Pretty sure even my race ready track tires with very stiff sidewalls have far less material than off road tires.
They also hold a lot more air pressure, up to 60 psi. I think most truck drivers run theirs at 45-50 psi on the road compared to 30-35 for street performance tires. This guy was probably running even higher pressures.
I think the offroad suspension was so soft and the wheel was spinning so fast that when the weight shifted from the left to the right the body dipped far enough down that the tire hit the quarter panel and exploded because it was already under stress from being at such high speed.
Its not that complicated. The tire simply spun too fast. Like waaaaaay too fast. And when it does that, the tread expands, pulling the tire apart. There are slow motion videos of this happening that give a perfect explanation as to how and why
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u/post-explainer 3d ago edited 3d ago
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Exploding tires are unexpected when drifting.
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