Damaged Rim

I had an adventure yesterday. While in my favorite wheeling area quail hunting, I aired down as is my new practice based on the other thread I started to air down or not.

I have been airing down to 22psi which makes the tires nice and squishy and greatly softens the ride. This wheeling area is primarily granite and lava rock, with ledges, drop offs, and large rocks in the road. While going at what I don't think was an unreasonable speed (I can almost walk that fast) I hit one of the above obstacles with my passenger side front tire. I heard a clunk, followed by whoosh, pause, whoosh, pause.

I thought I had a puncture and retrieved my puncture kit. I quickly learned that the puncture kit was not going to help me as the inner lip of the rim had taken a rock strike and was bent. As the tire would deform at the bottom of the rotation, air would bleed out. The impact point was about 3" long and would seal if the weight of the XK was on another part of the tire. Even with the weight on another area, the tire would only hold 15psi before leaking enough to be heard.

I found the rock the rim impacted, but was unable to tell if the rock
a) had just missed the tire and caught the edge of the rim
b) hit full on compressing the tire and then damaging the rim
c) any other potential scenario

I drove to a flat area, pulled the tire, and took a hammer to the inside of the rim. I was able to bend the rim back far enough to make the bead seal when the tire aired up to 50 psi. Luckily, it was the end of the day and the repair lasted until I got home. It is still inflated and even under submersion is not leaking air. As best I am able to tell without pulling the tire off the rim, the tire is undamaged.

I have never had this happen while wheeling before with any vehicle. I am unsure if it related to airing down, or just coincidence. Now that I am beyond this, here are the things I would like feedback on - what did I learn?

Was this just a freak thing likely to never happen again?
Was I going to fast?
Did I air down too much?
Was that the recommended repair?
Should I replace the rim or is it all good if it continues to hold air?
Are all repairs on the trail just a question of if you have a big enough hammer?

Was this just a freak thing likely to never happen again? crap happens on the trail

Was I going to fast? Probably were going to fast its always the rock you dont see that gets you

Did I air down too much? Nope 22psi is fine

Was that the recommended repair? Hammer it in place have rim balanced again

Should I replace the rim or is it all good if it continues to hold air? its good

Are all repairs on the trail just a question of if you have a big enough hammer? 90% of the time this is the case

You definately didnt air down to low. I have 32 inch tires and air down between 16-18 ft lbs when off roading without any issues. I see in you signature you have 33 inch tires with a 2 inch lift. How did you get that size to fit? Are you sure they are 33's? I think it was just a freak accident where you hit the wheel at a bad spot resulting in the damage. My wheels are all beat up from rock crawling, im surprised they even hold air anymore.

I'd concur with Sal on all accounts here, except his use of the word "probably" -- if you popped out the rim enough to blow air, you were going too fast.

That said, it's still a crap happens sometimes scenario. So you probably don't need to slow down. ;)

I did this exact same thing. Stock tires and wheels, was going through an open ford and hit it a little too hard. One big rock under water caught the left side wheels and bent the lips on both. Both left tires broke the bead on the inside. There I was , an hour and half from home with two flats and one spare. That was a bad ending to an otherwise great camping trip.

Just an update on this damaged rim:

I went and had my new tires installed. After that I noticed my TPMS light would come on. I found that I had a slow leak in the tire with this rim.

I thought maybe the new tires just didnt seal where the rim was still slightly out of round, but I took it back to the tire place anyway. After dunk testing it, I found out why it only leaked until it was about 20 psi. The rim had a stress crack in it where the metal had bent. It was probably made worse by the tire mounting machine. When aired up to 40 psi, I could hear it hiss. At 20 psi, there was not enough pressure to make the crack leak.

For steel rims this repair is OK.

For aluminum rims, its risky. first off you're lucky you didn't completely crack off that area while hammering it back. But since you did get it to seal enough to get out, that's good, but the wheel needs to be replaced. That stress crack was caused by hammering it back, not the tire machine.

It is replaced. That is just the first time I have had a rim failure that was pressure related. The others were all catastrophic, such as failure around the valve stem or just outright cracked and always leaking.

Update -

I peeled another rim this year in the same general 4X4 area as the original one in this thread. I aired down to about 30psi before starting this particular adventure.

Sidenote - A discussion for another thread, but I know to some of you that isn't airing down much. But I run 50PSi on road as a result of my mpg experiments and I have found this makes a 2-3mpg difference.

This time I again peeled the inside bead off the passenger side front tire. It appears the squishier tire allows the rocks (my primary obstacle in this area) to push in on the sidewall and then catch on the rim. Then as the tire rotates around, this rim takes the full weight of that wheel on the rim/rock combination, bending the rim. This time it didnt peel as bad as last time, and I used the same hammer to bend it back. My only loss was about an hour of hunting light.

When this happened the first time i thought this was just a fluke. Now I am starting to dream of ways to try to protect the rims, especially on the front tires where rocks may press against the sidewall while the tire is turned. One of these times I am going to not be able to bend it back. Worse than that, I dont want to keep replacing rims if this one ends up cracking like the last one did.

Any thoughts?

What tires are you using? I can't see sigs in tapatalk.

Are you running oem wheels??

OEM rims with Toyo Open Country 265/70R17 tires

Its amazing you were able to cause that much damage with 30psi in the tires....

Not a lot you can do to fix that other than getting a set of steel wheels OR getting a tire that has a larger rim protector. Some of the more aggressive tread designs have a much thicker section of rubber around the wheel lip.

I'm going to guess you didn't air down enough or hit the rock to hard/fast. If you air down to about 12PSI the tire becomes twice as wide as the rim. This creates a barrier so the rim should of had rubber between it and the rock. Look at my video here fast forward to 1:26 this is aired down to 15-17 PSI I think it was but you can see how much the tire mushrooms out protecting the rim from the rock.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQYHTCIXn9E

The first time I did this, I wasn't sure if speed might have been an issue. i wasn't going very fast, but I was moving. This last time, I know exactly where and when it happened. There was only one rock, about twice the size of a basketball, but shapped like a footbal. It had a scuff mark on a small sharp spot (the pointy end of the football) from the impact with the rim.

Sal - I watched your video and I see what you are talking about. My circumstances were a little different. This was the front tire, and it was turned all the way to side at the time. I am speculating this sideways force is what pulls the tire sidewall over enough to expose the rim. I wonder if airing down more as you suggest would make that pulling sideways of the rubber off center from the rim worse, or better? My thought was a stiffer tire (more psi) should stay more true to form right over the rim.