Have you ever heard of

[Psycolist]

an exploding inner tube splitting the rim of a wheel...... A neighbour of mine came knocking at my door with a bike wheel in her hand, and asked if I could fix the puncture on her sons mtb. Mr gallant says yes of course. Come in and have a coffee with the wife while I do the repair. Whipped off the tyre, and found a six inch long shredding in the tube. OMG I thought, no chance of a repair here, then I noticed the rim. There was a 4 inch long split in the wall of the wheel. A complete coming apart of the edge and the side wall. So, question ? Did the split rim lead to a puncture or did the puncture cause the split. ?? I have never seen a split rim before, Is it that common ?? What could have caused it ??

 

[screenman]

Rim brakes can easily wear a rim down, certainly enough for it to split.

 

[young Ed]

agreed i would imagine this is the rim wearing through and puncturing the tube
very occasionally i have heard of tubes blowing a weak tyre but never a tube blowing a rim
Cheers Ed

 

[crazyjoe101]

I think some of the higher pressure tyre and tubes can actually burst rims, but it's unlikely you'd have such expensive tyres paired with normal rims, especially in this case. Probably wear or a faulty / otherwise damaged rim pinching the tube.
I bet the neighbor was pleased.

 

[Ticktockmy]

Happened to me many years ago when touring in Wales, one evening as I was cycling into Gower and one hell of a bang and the tyre exploded, when I checked the rim it had split and banana-ed outwards. I put the cause down to the rim splitting causing the tyre to explode, luckily not to far to Swansea next morning to purchase a new wheel and tyre.

 

[02GF74]

if the bike has rim brakes, and I expect this is the case, then eventually the rim is worn down so it is so thin that the pressure from the inner tube on the tyre forces the rim part - there nothing to stop th inner tube from expanding and it very quickly reaches its elastic limit with a bang.

The puncture was a result of rim failure caused by being worn down by brake pads and pushed asunder by the pressure in the inner tube.