Catastrophic Failure

[nast70]

Coming home from a day of quading. Almost home, on the Whitemud the trailer tire blew. I think the weight of the load dropping suddenly caused the spindle to break. Nobody got hurt and was able to get on the shoulder without issue.
Big shout out to Kingsway towing for being Johnny on the spot and getting everything home, dropping the whole thing in the perfect spot on my driveway! The guy was a surgeon with the deck truck.

 

[neilsleder]

Coming home from a day of quading. Almost home, on the Whitemud the trailer tire blew. I think the weight of the load dropping suddenly caused the spindle to break. Nobody got hurt and was able to get on the shoulder without issue.
Big shout out to Kingsway towing for being Johnny on the spot and getting everything home, dropping the whole thing in the perfect spot on my driveway! The guy was a surgeon with the deck truck.


View attachment 230859

It looks like it’s been cracked for awhile. The bottom section of the crack is rusty.

 

[Cyle]

Yea there's no way a tire blowing caused that it was already ready to let go. Sorry to see it happened to you. It's a good lesson in trailer maintenance and the need to get under them and check things over to try catch these things before that happens.

 

[Bnorth]

Judging by the dirty crack and the bald inside shoulder on the tire I think the order of operations was the already tweaked spindle failing and rubbed the tire against the trailer frame until it blew.

 

[maxwell]

Yea there's no way a tire blowing caused that it was already ready to let go. Sorry to see it happened to you. It's a good lesson in trailer maintenance and the need to get under them and check things over to try catch these things before that happens.

says the guy that doesn't even have brakes on his semi truck

 

[nast70]

I did notice the wheel looked a bit 'off' on the highway. We stopped in Barrhead and jacked the trailer up to look at it. We initially thought bearings. The lash was maybe a bit more than normal, but not enough to cancel the trip. Must have been a combination of issues, worn bearings causing the tire to wear unevenly leading to its failure. Maybe a crack in the weld developed over time and began to rust further weakening the axle. Nobody I've shown this too has even seen a spindle break like that. This trailer has been through some rough places, and those are the original tires and axles.
When i take the axle in to get a new one built, i'm sure i'll get a better explanation to the how and why from the experts.
This is why i am on this type of forum. Shared experiences to learn from. Maybe this will save someone else a headache!

 

[Legend14]

Bad stuff happens all the time, don’t let the experts on here discourage you from posting this stuff,its how we all learn.if you haven’t had a trailer misshap in life, you have no life.

 

[Mike270412]

You pulled that down the Whitemud. That's a perfect place to test the structural integrity of any piece of equipment. If it makes the trip around the Henday ,or 43 to Whitecourt, it probably won't break. Looks like the spindle failure and blow out were probably happening at the same time. Spindle was slowly peeling up till tire blew.

 

[Mike270412]

At least it happened close to home, and at the end of a good day.

 

[zal]

says the guy that doesn't even have brakes on his semi truck

Rep given!!!

 

[nast70]

"At least it happened close to home, and at the end of a good day."

Literally 5 mins from home!

 

[Cdnfireman]

Looks like the bottom part of the weld had no penetration.....that stub was a failure in the making from day one....just a matter of when, and it’s not something you’d notice easily unless you had the hubs off for a repack and did a detailed inspection.....thankfully you had the driving skills to herd it off the road safely before things got really ugly...just imagine the insurance nightmare if the quads and other vehicles had been wrecked.....good job preventing something worse!

 

[nast70]

Looks like the bottom part of the weld had no penetration.....that stub was a failure in the making from day one....just a matter of when, and it’s not something you’d notice easily unless you had the hubs off for a repack and did a detailed inspection.....thankfully you had the driving skills to herd it off the road safely before things got really ugly...just imagine the insurance nightmare if the quads and other vehicles had been wrecked.....good job preventing something worse!

We did some long trips with that trailer this year, Crowsnest, Spirit River. If it went on one of those....well a much different story.
At least after throwing $700.00 at it, it will have all new running gear, heavier duty to boot. We can monitor it from the start.

 

[Mike270412]

I reported this post.

Rep given!!!

 

[Cyle]

says the guy that doesn't even have brakes on his semi truck

That's news to me, and the shop who just CVIP'd it. Been in my yard looking at my stuff?

 

[Pistonbroke]

That's news to me, and the shop who just CVIP'd it. Been in my yard looking at my stuff?

Nice deflection. Did you ever hook up that brake controller for the heavy trailer it pulls? Riiiiiiiiight.....

 

[overkill19]

You pulled that down the Whitemud. That's a perfect place to test the structural integrity of any piece of equipment. If it makes the trip around the Henday ,or 43 to Whitecourt, it probably won't break. Looks like the spindle failure and blow out were probably happening at the same time. Spindle was slowly peeling up till tire blew.

No kidding ! WTF is up with that? I just about had to pull over and put one of the wife’s bras on! I’d loose my mind driving that every day

 

[Beer Slayer]

Sort of looks like the spindle was failing first? Then tire rubbing against frame, then rim rubbing on springs when tire blew?

 

[arff]

New axle fix that right up.

And some new tires

Glad you are ok.

 

[Beels]

Judging by the dirty crack and the bald inside shoulder on the tire I think the order of operations was the already tweaked spindle failing and rubbed the tire against the trailer frame until it blew.

This ^^^

Good thing for people to see. Lots of times we take things like that for granted and can get left in a bad spot, or worse.