Maxxis M8008 self-destruct

Hi all,

I wanted to post an experience I had with Maxxis M8008 trailer tires. This is my first post here, so I hope this is the right forum for trailer tire issues, and I hope this is not too long!

In April of 2011, I bought a new set of 4 Maxxis M8008 ST205/75R14 tires for my 2009 North Trail 28' BHS travel trailer (5700lbs on trailer axles according to truck scale). After installation at America's Tire, I was annoyed to find that they were already 2 years old (2009 date code), but I was feeling sick that day and didn't have the energy to fight about it, so they are 5 years old now, with 3+ years of use. I would say I have put about 15K miles on these tires, all of which were on freeways or highways, and typically at a speed of 65mph. Compared to our previous tires, they are in excellent condition, no cracks, little evidence of wear, just all around great tires.

Coming home from a trip a week ago, we were on I5 northbound near Portland, Oregon, going about 65mph, temperature about 85F, when I happened to notice what looked like a chunk of tire flying off one of my passenger side trailer tires as I glanced in the mirror. Now, I always see stuff like this on the road, but this time I really felt like I should have noticed it on the road in front of me if it was already there, so I had this nagging feeling that it was from my trailer. But on the other hand, there was no indication that anything was wrong, and I figured I was being paranoid. I was tired, and we were almost home, and I really wanted it not to be a problem, so it was easy to ignore.

A few miles later, we hit a slowdown due to traffic, and I started to notice a lot of vibration I'd never felt before. At this time, I got really suspicious and decided I had to pull over, but it was a few more miles before there was somewhere safe to do so.

When I stopped and made my way back to the trailer, I saw nothing out of the ordinary at first. But upon closer inspection, I realized that about 1/3 of the tread was missing from the passenger side rear tire. I had been driving on the steel belts, but amazingly it was still holding air (which was pretty scary, because I pictured it exploding at any second).

Luckily, we had a usable spare tire, and there was minimal damage to the trailer, which I was able to repair later.

But I thought people might be interested in seeing this, since Maxxis are supposed to be the best trailer tires out there. I still believe this is probably true, and I suppose I'll replace this one with the same model, but even so, I continue to be shocked at just how often trailer tires fail. If car & truck tires were this bad, the manufacturers would have been sued out of business long ago.

On the plus side, the tire held air pressure and allowed us to drive something like 10+ miles in this condition. I've seen the aftermath of a few other blowouts, and I realize it could have been a lot worse.

Okay, so on to the photos:

The damage -- not really much at all:

The repair, before undercoating:

Seeking Advice

63 Replies

PartyMarty
Explorer
Oct 03, 2014
Copy Link
It is extremely rare to find a wheel stamped with a psi rating .
Some folks look at the wheel charts which say 1820 # load rating at 65 psi and think that is a psi limit .
actually what the chart is saying is that the tires need to be inflated to 65 psi to get that load rating .
that is why the wheels do not have a psi limit stamped on them , because there is not really a psi limit .
several posters to include capri racer , sprinkler man , low suv and gmw photos discussed this in depth a few months ago .
Steel wheels are strong enough to support a rated load and that rated load is a tenfold issue relative to the psi limit .
LarryJM
Explorer II
Oct 03, 2014
Copy Link
Lowsuv wrote:
LarryJM wrote:
Lowsuv wrote:
The bottom line is :
We are seeing zero posts of failures of LT tires on this forum .
We have seen two dozen plus posts over the last couple of years about Maxxis tires ( made by the Chang-Shin Rubber Company of Taiwan ) of failures .

At replacement time , a switch to the best LT alternatives such as
the Kumho 857 radial size 205R14 or
the Goodyear Cargo G26 size 225/70R15 will eliminate tire failures on trailers .
Both are Load Range D and fit onto the factory steel wheels without modification .

The equilivant LR "D" Kumho 857 in that size is a 65psi tire so the normal existing 50psi rims normally found on 14" ST OEM tires won't meet the requirements of that tire.

Larry

There are no RV steel wheels limited to 50 psi .
There are RV steel wheels that are stamped with a weight rating .
Some aluminum wheels are stamped with a psi limit .
Aluminum wheels , when they fail they do not do so catastrophically .
Aluminum wheels can develop a small hairline crack at the shoulder and these aluminum wheels simply will no longer hold air pressure .
Those failures occur do to usage and weight loading and are not caused by too much psi .
The myth that certain steel RV wheels are psi limited has been perpetuated on this forum by folks who simply don't know .
The strength of a steel wheel designed to support an 1820 # load rating is more than adequate to hold 80 psi and is not a design consideration in practical applications .

The fact is that I now have the Kumho 857's mounted on new 14" aluminum rims and those are only marked with a load rating. However, the original steel white spoked rims had a 50psi rating stamped on the inner hub surface along with a weight rating. That was specifically one of the reasons I got new rims when I went to the KUMHO 857s. BTW the new rims were listed on the website as 65psi, but when I got them they were only stamped with the weight rating.

Larry
Lowsuv
Explorer
Oct 03, 2014
Copy Link
Regarding Michelin Tires :
I just bought a new set of Michelin LT2 highway tires from Costco on the rebate / exec member promotion offering a $ 60 rebate plus $ 70 rebate .
I paid net $ 729 installed for size LT 265 /75 R16 Load range E after rebates .
They replaced a similar size LT 265/75R16 LRE Michelin that I had run for 60,000 miles on my duramax pickup .
The previous tires were not to the wear bars but I could not pass up the super-dooper sale price of $ 729 after rebates in early Sept 2014 ..
My original factory tires were the LT 245 /75R16 LRE .
The diameter of these LT 265 /75r16 LRE is 31.7 " .
They may have fit where the ST 235 /80 r16 trailer tires go because the diameters are the same at 31.7 " .
The LT 265 /75r16 LRE is placarded at 3415 # on the LT scale .
A logical upgrade for replacement of the ST 235/80 would be to measure to see if an LT 265 /75r16 LRE will fit , especially for the heavy toy haulers and 5th wheels .
Lowsuv
Explorer
Oct 03, 2014
Copy Link
Francesca Knowles wrote:
Lowsuv wrote:

I did a search looking for LT failure
I found no such post

Try different search terms. That is, if you really want to "know".

Here's one: Posted July 2013

Posted: 07/05/13 07:16pm Link | Quote | Print | Notify Moderator
Well, I never expected to be writing this but I had a blowout on my second set of Michelin 16” LT load range E tires. They were only a year old.

We were on our way back to Houston Tx a week ago from a long summer vacation loop through the southwest desert. (About a 3000 mile pull.) On the last day just a couple of hundred miles north of home on US 84 we lost a tire to what the tire store manager called a catastrophic blowout. (There were just some inner casing pieces between the beads.) This was during the heat wave, I think the outside air temperature was about 103 degF. I pull at 60 mph, checked my tire pressure in the morning as I started and thought I was good. All that came to an end when a car pulled up next to me and held up a sign saying “blowout”. Bummer.

I could not even tell I was down a tire. There was no indication based on handling. Last time I scaled I was about 8600 lbs total on the two 5200 lb trailer axles.

Now I don’t feel so invincible tire wise. It cold have been due to a bad tire, a leaky valve stem, road hazard, who knows?

Maybe it is time for RIBs on the trailer and a tire pressure monitoring system.

Good thing I carry a tire changing ramp and DOT triangles.

Oh well, time to go fix the damage to the trailer…

Thank you for the link.
This LT tire failure goes back to July 2013 , so about 15 months as opposed to Maxxis ( Chang-Shin Rubber of Taiwan ) which is posted about one per month .
The particular failure was in 103 degree heat .
A contributing factor was that the Michelin that failed was a SMALLER tire , size LT 225/75R16 LRE , rated for 2680 # on the LT scale.
The diameter of that 225 is 29.4 inches .
The original ST tire was an ST235 /80 R16 LRE placarded at 3420 # on the ST scale .
Diameter of that ST 235 /80 is 31.7 " .
A better choice would have been to use the very common LT 245 /75R16 LRE placarded at 3042 # on the LT scale .
The diameter of the 245 /75r16 is 30.4 "
The space was available to use the 245 /75 but instead a SMALLER 225 /75 was used and that weight rating is 88 % of the 245 /75 .
So far the single LT failure is one every 15 months and the mitigating factor is that the LT that failed was a SMALLER tire than the original by a factor of 88 % .
Francesca_Knowl
Explorer
Oct 03, 2014
Copy Link
Lowsuv wrote:

I did a search looking for LT failure
I found no such post

Try different search terms. That is, if you really want to "know".

Here's one: Posted July 2013

Posted: 07/05/13 07:16pm Link | Quote | Print | Notify Moderator
Well, I never expected to be writing this but I had a blowout on my second set of Michelin 16” LT load range E tires. They were only a year old.

We were on our way back to Houston Tx a week ago from a long summer vacation loop through the southwest desert. (About a 3000 mile pull.) On the last day just a couple of hundred miles north of home on US 84 we lost a tire to what the tire store manager called a catastrophic blowout. (There were just some inner casing pieces between the beads.) This was during the heat wave, I think the outside air temperature was about 103 degF. I pull at 60 mph, checked my tire pressure in the morning as I started and thought I was good. All that came to an end when a car pulled up next to me and held up a sign saying “blowout”. Bummer.

I could not even tell I was down a tire. There was no indication based on handling. Last time I scaled I was about 8600 lbs total on the two 5200 lb trailer axles.

Now I don’t feel so invincible tire wise. It cold have been due to a bad tire, a leaky valve stem, road hazard, who knows?

Maybe it is time for RIBs on the trailer and a tire pressure monitoring system.

Good thing I carry a tire changing ramp and DOT triangles.

Oh well, time to go fix the damage to the trailer…
Lowsuv
Explorer
Oct 03, 2014
Copy Link
wilber1 wrote:
Lowsuv wrote:
The bottom line is :
We are seeing zero posts of failures of LT tires on this forum .
We have seen two dozen plus posts over the last couple of years about Maxxis tires ( made by the Chang-Shin Rubber Company of Taiwan ) of failures .

At replacement time , a switch to the best LT alternatives such as
the Kumho 857 radial size 205R14 or
the Goodyear Cargo G26 size 225/70R15 will eliminate tire failures on trailers .
Both are Load Range D and fit onto the factory steel wheels without modification .

There have been several posts on LT failures. I can remember at least a couple on Goodrich Commercial TA's and not all were recall tires.

I did a search looking for LT failure
I found no such post
coolbreeze01
Explorer
Oct 03, 2014
Copy Link
My 225 75 15 E Maxxis did just fine on my OE rims with 205 75 15 C tires.
wilber1
Explorer
Oct 02, 2014
Copy Link
Me Again wrote:
Lowsuv wrote:

There are no RV steel wheels limited to 50 psi .
There are RV steel wheels that are stamped with a weight rating .
Some aluminum wheels are stamped with a psi limit .
Aluminum wheels , when they fail they do not do so catastrophically .
Aluminum wheels can develop a small hairline crack at the shoulder and these aluminum wheels simply will no longer hold air pressure .
Those failures occur do to usage and weight loading and are not caused by too much psi .
The myth that certain steel RV wheels are psi limited has been perpetuated on this forum by folks who simply don't know .
The strength of a steel wheel designed to support an 1820 # load rating is more than adequate to hold 80 psi and is not a design consideration in practical applications .

You know all this because?

Here is a picture of a Tredit T03 (I believe) wheel that came on Cardinals. These are 80 lb rated and were replaced with wheels rated to 110 lbs. Left unattended this would lead to rim and hub parting company.

How would this particular failure be related to tire pressure?
Francesca_Knowl
Explorer
Oct 02, 2014
Copy Link
Didn't mean to start a kerfuffle here- I just thought the O.P. might be interested in other choices since he's evidently decided he doesn't want to use Maxxis again.

I'm no Michelin fan per se, but in fairness I'd point out that Kumho has plenty of complaints, too, on its various passenger vehicle tires. here are some. I've never heard anything bad about the 857...but that may be due to its very limited use in this country. Despite its billing at the NA website as for small vans etc. it appears to be sold only for trailer use.

There are in fact other tires with "LT" in the label that are the same size and would fit the O.P's trailer, practically speaking. But many have very aggressive tread patterns- I thought the Michelin I posted looked good for the purpose.

O.P. might also note that there's some outside circumferential difference between these and the Maxxis- room in the wheel well may be an issue with either tire.
CKNSLS
Explorer
Oct 02, 2014
Copy Link
Me Again wrote:
CKNSLS wrote:
Before looking at a Michelin tire, I would suggest searching this forum and then a "google" search on what owners are saying about dry rot on other types of Michelin tires.

Yep, one of my RIBs got hairline cracks at 8.5 years. The other 3 were 7.5 years old when I sold them and they did not show similar hairline cracks. So that makes me the only person on the forum to report a problem with Michelin XPS RIBs! The fifth one(nearing 10 or 11 years old) is still hanging under the front on my trailer(zero miles) here in the Eastern Washington Wine Country. I will finally replace it this winter with a Bridgestone Duravis R500 HD like I recently installed on my TV, as we are going to make a month long California/Arizon trip to scout parks for the following winter when my Yacht Club officer duties are finished. Chris

On the Ribs you may be correct Chris-but there are quite a few dry rot reports on Michelin tow vehicle tires. The question is will this be the case with the Ribs moving forward?

Forum Discussion

Maxxis M8008 self-destruct

63 Replies

About RV Tips & Tricks

Related Content

Maxxis M8008 still good?

Maxxis M8008 Failures

Maxxis M8008 Tires Update

Tread Separation on Maxxis M8008

Maxxis M8008 or Carlisle Trail HD