afishinado wrote:
Now Larry's comment has me more worried than about the dents in the back of my cab.
Not to scare you, but you should be. Typically TT tires are already running at close to max capacity and what few appreciate is that it doesn't take much ... like one good Freeway Pothole hit to compromise a TT tire to the point of being unreliable. Once the damage is done then it only gets worse since you are then most likely overloading the tire from that point on and it's is all down hill from there. I'm in the camp that even a flat or siginificantly low pressure in a tire on one side of a tandem trailer necessitates changing out BOTH TIRES on that side since the other tire has most likely been overloaded and therefore compromised. I always have a good spare that I can put on for a bad tire and then I buy a new tire to replace the other tire on that side and put the tire that appears to still be good to my spare. Then if I have another flat then I might use that questionable spare till I can buy TWO NEW tire for that side of the trailer.
Some might say I'm being overly cautious or even paranoid, but the damage that can happen from a BLOW OUT or catastrophic tire failure to a trailer potentially costing thousands of $$ for lack of the extra $150 for a tire that might have questionable reliability is just not a chance I'm willing to take. This speed issue with ST tires along with getting almost 1,000 lbs more reserve capacity were the major reasons I invested in new rims and changed out my prefectly good existing GY trailer tires for the Kumhos which have a speed rating of 99mph IIRC.
All I can say is that I had run until two years ago when I went to the Kumho 857s the GY Marathons for over 20 years w/o one siginificant problem following this procedure for the handful of flats I had during that time and never had a BLOW OUT or catastrophic tire failure in those 20 years.
FWIW Below is a post from a tire engineer from 05/23/14 at 11:26am which IMO is worth of repeating to emphasis the point I'm trying to get across...
Tireman9 wrote:
Hi, Tire Engineer here. The analogy of Redline is mine. I was trying to come up with some way to let people know they should not drive above 65 and in fact should drive slower. The Load/Inflation tables for ST type tires go back to the days of 55 mph National Speed limit and have not and probably will never be adjusted as the load limits would probably be decreased which of course the RV mfg does not want.
Just as redline in an engine can probably be exceeded momentarily there will probably be cumulative permanent damage done to the engine and its life will be cut drastically, exceeding the 65 speed limit for tires can be momentarily be exceeded but the tire will be damaged and its life shortened. It may be possible that some tires are slightly more tolerant of exceeding the redline than others but I know of no way to pre-determine which individual tires can tolerate over speed. Also if a tire has ever been run low on air there will be internal damage which may make a single mile at 66 too much.
LINKLarry
