Wednesday 3 February 2010

The strange case of the exploding Brompton tyre

I was chatting to a friend at work yesterday and he relayed a strange story. He does a commute into work on his Brompton, then folds the thing up and parks it in his office.  He said that - for the SECOND TIME - a tyre exploded in the office with a pretty loud bang, somewhat alarming co-workers in the area.

The explanation, he says, is that a shard of glass had probably become embedded in the tyre earlier that morning. Then, as the bike warmed up in the nice cosy office, the pressure built up, culminating in a big bang. Apparently the pressure on a Brompton is pretty high anyway. No idea why, but possibly it needs to be for such tiny wheels.

Anyway - rather alarming but fascinating. Any one else had an exploding tyre in the office before? (!)

KC

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It just happened to me! Same thing, bike under under desk, folded up - BANG, everyone looks round, Gareth thinks he got shot - I've got a flat rear tyre.

KarmaCycle said...

Aha! Good to hear that my friend is not alone! I think this constitutes a ... trend (!)

Thanks for posting - I'll send the link to my chum. KC