Steer tire width...

"get a tire with extra long tread life" ... guess if your tires are 14 years old then tread life may be a concern, otherwise most age out before they wear out. How wide are your rims and what width rim do the 11" tires require?

Ivylog wrote:
..."get a tire with extra long tread life" ... guess if your tires are 14 years old then tread life may be a concern, otherwise most age out before they wear out...

True, most RVers never run the tread off the tires...they die of old age first.

The wider tread would have more drag; giving you lower gas mileage and higher cost.

Jim,

Tell us the OE tire size and what tire you are contemplating.

Also, how close to tire capacity are you with actual coach wheel position weights?

Opps...sorry, Brett, I should have put that in the original post.

235/80R22.5 Michelin XRV are the tires I'm replacing. They're the steer tires and one of them is in excellent shape and is a 7 year old tire, the other one is 10 years old and has lots of tread, but spider cracks.

The replacement tires I'm considering are 11R22.5's. Or 10R22.5. Have a choice of either.

Finally, I don't know about weights yet, but if this newer RV is like my last one, I'm nowhere near weight capacity.

I have worn out sets of tires in my 12 years of full timing, so tread life is important to me. I also buy truck tires that don't have the softness RV tires have and also don't seem to ever crack on the sidewalls. But those were 19.5 tires and these 22.5 are all new to me.

The 11R 22.5 is over 4" taller and 2" wider.

Also be sure to check your rim width; the 235/80 22.5 can be mounted on a 6.75" rim, the 11R cannot.

We just went from a 275/70-22.5 to 11R 22.5s and that was a pretty big jump - and the 275/70 is bigger than the 235/80.

I'm not saying it won't work, I'm saying make darn sure you know what you're doing.

Agree-- WAY too big a jump in size-- big change in effective axle ratio.

And very unlikely your rims would be wide enough anyway.

Save money? Is the wider tire less expensive?

Long life tread.. Very few RV tires outlive the tread, Most die of old age first, if your tires are 10 years old they are dangerous even if 90Z of the original tread (or more) is left.

wolfe10 wrote:
Agree-- WAY too big a jump in size-- big change in effective axle ratio.

And very unlikely your rims would be wide enough anyway.

Thats exactly why we up sized. IMO our MH was geared way too low; our speedo was off by 5 MPH and we were turning way too many RPMs. Spartan said it was right where it needed to be, I disagreed.

With the new tires the speedo is spot on and the RPMs dropped around 250 to a more reasonable speed.

We're headed on our first trip of the season next week, I'll let you know how it goes.

From Michelin:

Revolutions per mile:
235/80R22.5= 556
11R22.5= 502
10R22.5= 515