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On December 1, 2017 Walmart installed 5 new Goodyear tires on my Wrangler. The fifth was for the spare. The old tires had tread but were 7 years old. I tow this Jeep behind an RV. I bought the tires to avoid a blowout while towing. There were new tires on the RV as well. On January 20 we started our seasonal trip to Florida. About 4:00 pm, the left front tire came apart destroying the fender, turn signal, side marker, bent front bumper, ripped the wiring from the RV that controls lights, as well as the front Jeep wiring left side. When I stopped, nothing but a piece of wire was wrapped around the front rim. No rubber and the alloy rim damaged beyond use. At that point I just thought I picked up a nail and got a flat. Thank goodness I had a new spare was my thought. The next day, 1/21/18, about 3:00 pm the right rear tire came apart and when I got stopped the only thing left was about an inch where the tire meets the rim, 2 rings of rubber. I had to have the Jeep towed to the nearest tire center, Firestone Complete Auto Care. There, I noticed that the right front tire had small pieces of rubber missing. I replaced all the remaining Goodyear tires. I Contacted both Walmart, which reimbursed me, and Goodyear. Goodyear had me fill out a claim form. They made arrangements to have the right front tire and the 2 pieces shipped back to them. I received a certified form letter stating the one tire has normal wear (chunks of rubber missing is normal wear?) and manufactured fine. The two pieces of the rear tire was lost??? I contacted Goodyear by phone and asked how that determination can be made when two new tires, one day apart, came apart and a third showing signs of a problem. Since they don’t have a tire to examine they claim the problem is not theirs. They said to send pictures. The result was the same. My question is has anybody had problem a with Goodyear tires failing? A recent article in a local paper showed Goodyear had problems with RV tires. This info was supplied by NHTSA.

Quick answer to this question is I bring this up for a couple of reasons. One is that I just read a RV forum post from someone that was stuck in mud and tried "spinning" their tires to get out. (it didn't work) The other reason is that with Canada and portions of the US that normally never get real cold in a deep freeze, there will be some vehicle owners experiencing frozen ground conditions and they may never have had that experience before. The reason the practice of spinning your tires is dangerous is that very few RVs have limited slip differentials so when they rev the engine and spin their tires in a effort to get going they may UN-wittingly be spinning their tires at speeds high enough to cause a tire failure and explosion. When you spin your tires the spinning tire is going TWICE the speed indicated on your speedometer. This picture shows what can happen to a passenger size tire. As you can see in this failure, not just the tread comes off and the sidewalls blow-out but the Hi-Tensile bead wire fractures in multiple locations which allows the complete tire to become a missile. When this happens with a small passenger car tire it may only "remove" one corner of the car. Sometimes a "free spin" tire failure ends up almost a mile away! Now for a moment think what a LT or TBR tire might do if it were to fail in a similar manner. If you are stuck, the best way to get out is to either use sand or gravel or to get some towing assistance. But please never simply spin your tires. The above post will be published on my blog next week but I thought this safety warning was time critical so FMCA gets an early look.