Roll Call Alaska 2015

richarfg wrote:
I don't know how many people do this, but I just had two new steering tires placed on my coach. Even though the DOT date is beyond the supposed life of the tires, I decided to put them on the roof of the coach, and intend to carry them in that position up to Alaska. My reason? If it were to take some time to get a replacement tire, should I encounter a road hazard or blow-out; I could much easier find someone who could mount the tire in a timely fashion than waiting on a new tire. Is this overkill?

I think it is a very good idea and not overkill at all, I allways brought two spare tires on my trips to AK with the Truck camper, one mounted, the other one on the roof. I bring many plugs with a flat repair kit to do it myself if I have to and an air compressor.

Your old tires are probably still good for many years anyway if they do not show signs of wear or cracks. Depending on the size and on where you are, it could take many days to get a tire. If you are stuck on the side of the road, it could mean having to tow the RV.

Here is a few incident I had. I had a blow out in Cortez Colorado last month on a friday afternoon on the RV (Class A), it allways happens on a friday, in the boonies. I drove with the blown tire for about 10 miles to get to the town, I realized after that the tire was rubbing on the suspension air balloon, luky I did not blew the balloon.

There was only two tire shops doing big tires, Cortez is like 40 miles or so to the next good size town. One shop did not have the tire and could not get one before monday at the soonest, but not of the same brand as mine and way too expensive. The other had tow tires on hand but not really the brand I liked, not the brand I would have installed back home anyway. I did not want to wait for the 3 to 4 days so I finally bought the tire. While dismantling the tires, they found another tire with bad cracking, so I had to buy two tires which I installed at the steering. The shop also said I could not install a brand new tire with a half worn one on a 2 wheel rear set-up since the new one would wear down too fast as it was not riding at the same height.

The shop was able to replace big tires on truck and RV but did not have a machine to take the tires apart, also, the garage was not big enough to take the RV inside. So they did the job outside using crow bars to dismantle the tire from the rims and re-install. This tells me that the job could be done on the side of the road without a tire machine. So your tire could come very handy.

One time in Tok AK, I had a tire going bad, it begun to sway because of a broken wire. Lukily, I had a tire on my roof, it took half an hour and I was back on the road.

Another occasion, right in the middle of the Denali Highway gravel road,I stopped for sight seeing on the side of the road and heard a puisshssss. I had to use 4 plugs to temporaly fix the leak, otherwise I would of had to use the spare tire and left with no mounted spare for the next 60 miles. Getting a towing in this area is probably very very expensive.


Bring the tires, bring plugs, bring a compressor, have a good trips