Metal stem

j-d wrote:

Strabo wrote:
I use the high pressure rubber stems myself.

If those work for you, fine. They're rated 80 PSI if I recall, might be 100, just not sure.

Our coach had those when we bought it. Good Bridgestone tires, crappy (and I'll defend that word in a minute) "high pressure rubber" valves.

I found that if I as much as pressed a tire gauge onto the valve crooked, it would hiss, losing air at the hole in the rim. That alone was enough to point me to metal valves.

Later, I learned that while Extenders, Adapters, etc. were trouble enough on Metal Valves, adding them to Rubber Valves was a Recipe for Disaster. The Valve itself, by itself, may be OK. But NEVER with any additional weight more than a cap added! So, I say, Crappy!

I agree, on a dually you must have metal. My SRW uses 110psi valves so they don't get ripped off when in sand, mud, dirt and the like.

Dually's don't see much 4 wheel drive situations, cept for stuck ones. :)

On my visit to the Costco Tire center last fall with the minivan I needed two new winter tires. I was forced to have the new tires on the back rather than the front because some tire company is showing videos of the usual best tires on the front arrangement causing accidents on a test track with a wet surface on a curve. These constraints will result in us buying more tires in the future. When the fronts wear more you can't just move them to the back anymore.

My MH tires had to be replaced due to age before any serious wear was apparent so perhaps this isn't an issue for us.

Just because Costco put the new tires on the back doesn't mean you can't rotate them to the front. I suspect it's just store policy, and not law that the better tires must be on the back, though I don't specifically know Alberta laws.

There is a little bit of sense to the recommendation to have good traction in the back, but the need for it in my humble opinion is often overstated for many modern vehicles. A lot of cars are so biased towards understeer that it's hard to get them to oversteer under most any circumstances. Modern electronic stability control systems also help here. There are practical advantages to having the better tires on the front of a front-wheel-drive vehicle, too, such as being better able to climb snowy hills.