There was a posting on the samba about 2 weeks ago, by a guy with a syncro who had a rear blow out, but an entirely different experience. His rig immediately flipped on it's side. The pictures are very sad to look at, though he walked away from it. Glad you didn't have the same result.

--- On Sun, 8/3/08, Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET> wrote:
From: Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
Subject: Rear flat at freeway speed...
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Date: Sunday, August 3, 2008, 9:21 PM

This morning at "O-dark-thirty" I headed west down I-84 towards
Portland to
make a bike race..About 1/2 an hour into the drive, I have a 'mandated'
stop, and as I re-approach the van, I hear a hissing, like the radiator is
boiling or a hose has a pin hole or something.."Great," I
think," now I may
have problems and miss the race."  I do a walk around and look for
coolant,
check everything visually..nothing...I only have about 15 miles to the race,
so I think..."Get going, maybe it is just a little hot from the fast
freeway
driving..fix it after the race"...I start west again, with an eye on all
the
gauges..  This being the Windy Columbia River Gorge, the van is doing it's
usual  gusty 'cha-cha' but I detect a little  more "Sashay"
than usual..then
I hear this huge 'bang!'...I check the mirrors and see a big cloud of
smoke..."Dang" I think, "That bragging about how dependable my
motor has
been musta jinxed me, and she let go"  But the gauges still look
normal..and
then it hits....I have a freaking flat tire!  By the time I got slowed and
off to the shoulder, the thing was in shreds..Lost one of my nice new K-mart
wheel covers, too.
   The van was remarkable stable without a rear tire.. Nankang LTR,  BTW,
with good tread left..I would have thought with it's high center of gravity
and short wheel base, a vanagon would be a real handful with a blow
out..Quite the opposite..
    So a quick change, and I still made the bike race..

  Don Hanson