Forum Discussion

bjarnold's avatar
bjarnold
Explorer
Jul 24, 2018

Itasca Spirit 31' Tires

I need to replace the 10 year old tires on my 2000 Winnebago Itasca Spirit 31ft and have a few options available. Are they all about the same quality?. The load range is all the same

1. BF Goodrich Commercial T/A 225/75/16
2. Firestone TransForce H/T 225/75/16
3. Goodyear Wrangler H/T 225/75/16
  • We have a 30 ft. 2003 Itasca Class C and I have all Hankook tires. No compelling reason other than that's what my tire shop suggested and put on. Also had them on my last car. No problems at all. It's not been proven to me that the most expensive or best known brands are significantly better than something like Hankook so I tend to shop for price somewhat. That's important with a 6 tired vehicle. I've really never had problems with tires throughout my 60 years of driving. Maybe more important to make sure the tires are heavy duty to handle heavy loads and to watch for under inflation and replace at 5-7 years no matter the looks.
  • A thought on Ford chassis tire wear. If toe-in is set to Ford's specs, You WILL experience wear (and sometimes cupping) of the front tire's outside edge. Tire dealers will sometimes suggest you go to an alignment shop where they will sometimes try taking some of the toe in off. This will help the outer edge wear BUT will make the coach much more susceptible to being pushed around by crosswinds or oncoming trucks. Big truck chassis need that factory toe in setting to compensate for the action of the forward thrust of the coach pushing the tires straight against the pretty much non-adjustable caster setting. My experience over the decades has been fronts will wear out the outside edge at about 40K miles while the rears will last quite a bit longer. On our old RVs, I'd swap the fronts to the outer rear every 15K miles or so. Now that we have an coach with 22.5 wheels, the lug nut torque is now 450 ft/lbs rather than the old 19" 150 ft/lbs so I've resigned myself to just buying a couple of front tires sooner. I know you can get a torque multiplier to break the lugs free but torque wrenches capable of reading 450 are VERY expensive. The RV shops seem to all want quite a bit of money to rotate the tires. Gotta pay for those tools, I guess.
  • My rig came with Michelins and I eventually switched to Toyos.