It's a Shame!
It's a shame RV manufactures (Keystone, specifically) resort to putting marginal tires, on their "luxury" fifth wheels. I realize it's a cost factor, but they are shooting themselves in the foot as fa...
Forum Discussion
rbowen1063 wrote:bstark wrote:
This tire thing has been around since warranties became an item of desire.
Many criteria go into the selection process of tires rated for just marginal weight rating surplus.
My thoughts on this dating back to 2001 and my experience with "E" rated tires on a 'then new' Cedar Creek Custom 36RLTS was, they liked putting tires on a rig with lower required air pressures and perhaps fewer sidewall plys for the reasons of ride compliance for the rig and all of it's fragile inner components from cabinetry to wall/ceiling fastenings.
They are using the additional sidewall flex as a suspension component to, as has already been said, get the thing through it's 12 month warranty period with perhaps not even a third of that time actually spent going down the road.
After years of towing that rig and putting up with the tire failures and rusted out spring packs cracking right at the locating hole over the axle I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to a spring pack with one more leaf and "G"rated tires. Never another problem until we sold the rig in early 05.
I did not bother with inflation tables but relied upon max pressure and an infrared heat reader to monitor tires and axle hubs for any overheat problems from tires, a dragging shoe, or bearing problems.
Our last fiver came from the factory with "H"rated commercial tires and I still maintained max pressures with a Pressure-pro panel for both truck and trailer to monitor pressure spikes indicating an overheat along with my infrared gun for rest stop checks of hubs and sidewalls.
The more you use inflation tables to determine your pressures the more sidewall flex you are allowing and tread "squirm" the more heat your tires are subject to and that leads to possible delamination of tread and failure of sidewall.
I went down this road with everyone from commercial tire reps to professional fleet managers and they all agreed with one thing: using tire inflation tables to mitigate ride characteristics of your vehicle is alright if you've got LOTS of spare weight capacity to play with but if using your sidewall flex to give your trailer a better ride with only a few hundred pounds of weight rating surplus you're headed for trouble eventually.
Having a tire blow out or delaminate it's entire tread to chew up the side of your rig is not something to risk so as to keep your cutlery from rattling in the drawer..
Good post!! I upgraded to a Carlisle "F" rated with steel rims and s/s valves stems. I also invested in a sensor system to monitor the pressure and temp of each tire. I intend to make sure the tires are at max pressure 95 psi. Thanks for your input.
