bias ply tires
It appears that the R-Vision I bought, has Bias ply tires. Should I go back with those or Radials. Thanks Jim
Forum Discussion
Actually, no. It's not.
There are (at least) a couple of things that you need in order for the aggregate anecdotal information provided in forums like this (and others) to be useful:
1. The total number of tires of a particular brand (model, size, etc.) in service on all of the trailers (or other vehicles) of all members of the sites where failures are reported, along with the total number of failures reported. This is needed so that you can calculate a rough percentage failure rate, and determine whether or not there is enough data about a given brand (model, etc...) to be statistically significant.
2. The exact conditions under which the tire was used, and the exact conditions under which the tire failed. For each tire, this would need to include the age from manufacture, the number of service miles, the pressure at time of failure, the lowest and highest pressures at which the tire was ever used, the average pressure at which the tire was used, the weight being supported by the specific tire (not the weight of the trailer divided by 4) at the time of failure, the lowest and highest weights the tire was ever subjected to, and the average weight the tire was subjected to. There are probably a handful of other things too (temperature, road conditions, for instance).
Without these crucial pieces of information there is no way to know that a particular tire is better or worse than any other. It could just be, for instance, that the sort of people that buy cheap tires (or keep the OEM tires, which tend to be cheap) also tend to be the sort of people that don't weigh their trailer, don't load carefully, don't tow level, exceed the speed rating, and don't check their pressure. Whereas the sort of folk that are concerned enough to buy a particular brand of tire with a better reputation could be the sort of folk that do take care to insure they operate well within the tires' limits (or who have learned to do so).
I also wouldn't be surprised if some portion of the reported failures are actually caused by road hazards (punctures) - this isn't always obvious after a tire's been destroyed.
It could also be that a particular brand really is better. From the information provided on sites like this, even in aggregate, there is just no way to know which of these (or other possible scenarios) is really the case.
There's no substitute for scientifically rigorous independent testing.
There are (at least) a couple of things that you need in order for the aggregate anecdotal information provided in forums like this (and others) to be useful:
1. The total number of tires of a particular brand (model, size, etc.) in service on all of the trailers (or other vehicles) of all members of the sites where failures are reported, along with the total number of failures reported. This is needed so that you can calculate a rough percentage failure rate, and determine whether or not there is enough data about a given brand (model, etc...) to be statistically significant.
2. The exact conditions under which the tire was used, and the exact conditions under which the tire failed. For each tire, this would need to include the age from manufacture, the number of service miles, the pressure at time of failure, the lowest and highest pressures at which the tire was ever used, the average pressure at which the tire was used, the weight being supported by the specific tire (not the weight of the trailer divided by 4) at the time of failure, the lowest and highest weights the tire was ever subjected to, and the average weight the tire was subjected to. There are probably a handful of other things too (temperature, road conditions, for instance).
Without these crucial pieces of information there is no way to know that a particular tire is better or worse than any other. It could just be, for instance, that the sort of people that buy cheap tires (or keep the OEM tires, which tend to be cheap) also tend to be the sort of people that don't weigh their trailer, don't load carefully, don't tow level, exceed the speed rating, and don't check their pressure. Whereas the sort of folk that are concerned enough to buy a particular brand of tire with a better reputation could be the sort of folk that do take care to insure they operate well within the tires' limits (or who have learned to do so).
I also wouldn't be surprised if some portion of the reported failures are actually caused by road hazards (punctures) - this isn't always obvious after a tire's been destroyed.
It could also be that a particular brand really is better. From the information provided on sites like this, even in aggregate, there is just no way to know which of these (or other possible scenarios) is really the case.
There's no substitute for scientifically rigorous independent testing.
