Originally Posted by
AZORCH
I didn't pay much attention to the bike - some kind of hybrid, if I recall correctly. I also didn't check to see what rim it was either but it strikes me that it might've been CR-18. Jeez, can you really put that much pressure in a tube to blow apart the metal?
We don't know what pressure it was running, but 120psi means exactly that, 120 pounds for every square inch! That it pushed the rim apart once the crack formed isn't surprising. We could question how it went that far before blowing the tube, but the explanation is simple. The rim strip did its job. Probably a wide strip of thick rubber or strong cloth. The loud bang would have been the tube finally finding an opening.