Originally Posted by
Yankeetowner
My question is: "Is this a relatively common occurrence, or at least not uncommon, to have a puncture blow out a large section of the sidewall of a good quality tire?" While I haven't seen it, I only ride with a group once a week, and only restarted riding a year ago.
I'd put this in the extremely rare category - and not one I've ever seen. I have seen plenty of large nails and staples that created instant flats and some of which went through the rim in addition to the tire, but none that resulted in a large sidewall tear. Perhaps the nail in this case happened to scrape hard along the sidewall and damage many of the tire cords which then caused the tire to rupture. The only blowout sidewall tears I've seen were either with very old and worn tires or where a brake pad was misadjusted and had been rubbing on the tire sidewall just above the bead.