Tires, Tires, Tires!

It'd be nice to know the Make/Model/Size of the RV. If it's a small to mid size Class C on Ford...

The Firestone Transforce seems like a good tire and one that can be bought at a discount price. I'd call it equivalent to Michelin LTX-MS/2

Speaking of Discount, Discount Tire (America's Tire in the West) will do RV tires no issue. Some big boxes like Sam's Club won't.

Ford doesn't suggest rotation on rear tires. I rotate Spare to Left Front, Left Front to Right Front, Right Front to Spare. More on that to follow...

This is my opinion, but I believe the Right Rear Inner leads the worst life of all the tires. It's in out of the air flow, so it runs warm. It also carries a little more load than the outer if the road is severely crowned. So does the Left Inner, but: At least on Ford, it's close to the hot tailpipe, and worse, the Right OUTER gets run off the edge of the pavement. When that happens, the Inner takes the full right rear load.

Tires never forget an offense. When that inner blew, the outer was suddenly and severely overloaded. May have looked OK, but it was angry and you were gonna pay.

Here's what I'd do:

Round out your set of new tires. If you have two new but different ones, either use both on the front or get a matching one for the front and make the other one a spare.

I think you should have a spare, and that spare should be a young tire. Our prev owners never used the OEM spare, and I scrapped it when we bought 07 new tires. Still had mold marks, factory label, never on the ground. That's why I rotate the spare with the fronts. Would rather mount a spare that was young and had been driven than one that was young but never on the ground.

You don't want to mount a spare and have it fail in 50 miles because it was aged out and you have 100 miles to go!

Put custom valve stems on your four rear tires and 02" metal stems on your fronts and spare. I have Borg (Dually Valve) and those are the least expensive option right now. That's thanks to Camping World selling them now at a very attractive retail price, and they often have sales/specials/coupons. The more expensive Tire-Man sets are the same stuff. Not a bit better. Both Bill FalkenBorg and Chuck Carvitto are great guys with good products. I bought Bill's Dually Valves because that's what a shop (Six Robblees) was carrying and the price was very good. Either will give you great performance, better than just about any other option. Just put GOOD STEMS all around!

All the LT225/75R16 tires carry the same Load and Pressure Ratings. Even if your coach is lighter like E350 chassis, you'll probably end up with the Load Range E tires rated to the higher axle load of E450.

If your coach isn't maxed out on weight, I'd say get LTX, TransForce or the like. If you know you're at max axle weights, like we are, then consider a "commercial" tire in that same 225/75R16E size. The Michelin XPS RIB and Bridgestone Duravis R250 come to mind. They aren't rated any higher, but are built to be a little tougher. I'd heard the LTX tire in 225/75R16E has been reinforced with an extra steel ply. Might be worth investigating.

Since the tire life is not generally limited by treadwear, there's no big reason to rotate the tires on most motorhomes. You go to extra work to end up getting rid of tires which are old but have even more tread left.

Whether a tire store will work on a motorhome or not varies with the store. Best probably is just to call them and ask. Most class C's are on van chassis, and the wheels and tires are not particularly unusual sizes for vans or larger pickup trucks; it's more a question of whether they have a lift or a jack to use on the motorhome, and (in the case of a jack) if they're willing to go to the effort of doing so.

If you do rotate the tires on a motorhome, bear in mind that it's best to keep each of the two tires in a dually pair together so they wear about the same. Having one of the two larger than the other leads to extra wear and heat (they have to turn together since they're bolted together, and if one is a bit larger diameter than the other, the difference has to be made up by slipping slightly. For this reason it's also a very good idea to keep the pressure in the two as close to equal as possible.)

If your tires are directional or you're unlucky enough to have different wheel designs for the front and rear or for the inner and outer duallies, that further limits what you can do to rotate them. Most tires are not directional (if they are, they're marked with an arrow to show the rotation direction), and at least the Ford chassis generally has identical wheels all around.

The outside tire was 4-5 years old--don't remember the number. The inside tire--who knows? Another question is do you rotate tires on a motorhome?

We had all 6 tires replaced a few months ago, after a blowout to an inside rear tire. Our tires were 7 years old at the time. They looked to be in great shape with very minor cracking on the sidewall. With 29k miles on them, they looked to have plenty of tread left.

We replaced them with Michelin LTX M/S2 tires (stock were the LTX M/S). We have a trusted repair shop that we took the motorhome to. I also had them install TireMan's solid valve stems at the same time.

We have AAA and they have been very good to us, but they will not replace a tire if we don't have a spare. Just to put our spare on, the mobile tire repair guy charged AAA $250. He would have probably charged more than double to put a tire on the wheel and then mount it.

-Michael

You have not mentioned make and model of RV and especially year. Tires age out. I just replace the four rear 22 inchers on my rv. They looked new as far as tread wear.

My tire pressure monitor probably just save me from an expensive disaster a few days after having them replaced. One of the valve extenders developed a leak. Probably from me hitting it with the wheel buffer. My monitor beeped and showed the tire down to 85 lbs. It was an inside dual. With the extender off there have been no more problems.

We are on our second set of Yokohama tires and have been very pleased.
IMHO you experienced the fallacy of having tires inspected. Tires should be replaced every 5 years and in the Phoenix area every 4 years. A inspection can only catch inflation and wear issues not internal issues.
If you loose one the tires on a dual set up you should replace both tires since the tire the did stay inflated has been subjected to a huge overload.
Again this is IMHO
Be prepared to be told that someone has tires that are much older and they are fine because they have been covered and treated with some magic elixir.

You probably were gouged as the people selling you the tire knew you were at there mercy.
I believe you have an 07 Winnie. Question is what size tires?
I usually get my tires mounted at the place that takes care of my motorhome.
I get my tires online and have them shipped directly to the place mounting them.