We are about to take our first long trip ever with our trailer,an 1100 mile round trip. I was out looking at the tires and noticed two had weather checking/cracks in the sidewalls. The other two look perfectly fine. The manufacture date on the tires is mid-2007, so they are about 6 years old. Are the cracks cosmetic or should I have them replaced? Should I have them all replaced? The two showing cracks replaced? Tire1Tire2Tire 2 seems to be the deepest/worst but seems to be relatively small area wise. Tire 1 seems to be relatively shallow but cover more area.

Since you live in ID, you're probably not to far from a Les Schwab tire dealer, I'd go to them and get their advice on your tire situation. They're a real honest company, I've bought tires from them for many years and they will treat you fairly. If you replace all four. you'll be trouble free for at least five years, probably longer. They only sell good tires so you won't be faced with cracking again, especially if you can cover the tires when parked for long periods of time during storage.

Even without the obvious signs of decay, at six years old those trailer tires have outlived their useful life. Good for you for checking them out, and do replace them before you go.Before you make any decision to go off-spec from what your trailer manufacturer recommends, however, be advised that if you do so, such tires will be sold to you without warranty from the seller. (Not an approved design use for LT tires)Good luck!

Personally if I had ANY worries about any of the tires I would replace all four, saving best one as new spare (if spare is older). Not sure what size you have, if 15" I'd get Maxxis, not some Chinese junk.FYI we have put over 200,000 miles on various non-Chinese ST tires. Only issues have been a few repairable nail punctures. We do not run tires over 7 years old per DOT code.

Wonder why it is when folks post a question about tires and show a photo, the letters c h i n a nearly always appears in it somewhere?The best word I've ever heard anyone mention about defending these c h i n a tires is "Well, mine are OK."OK is not the word I'd prefer to hear when asking about the most important thing between me and the road in my RV with myself and family in it - that's for certain.Another amazing comment - I saved $20 each ..... $20 EACH, that's $80 bucks on a ballpark of a $20k - $40k trailer, or a $150k and up MH. Not my priority

Chuck&Gail wrote:Personally if I had ANY worries about any of the tires I would replace all four, saving best one as new spare (if spare is older). Not sure what size you have, if 15" I'd get Maxxis,.X-2, especially the Maxxis part!!!

Tires | Good Sam Community

2012Coleman
Explorer II
Jul 12, 2013
So tires made by GoodYear in their China facility don't meet US standards? Last time I checked, GoodYear is a US based corporation.
CKNSLS
Explorer
Jul 12, 2013
2012Coleman wrote:
So tires made by GoodYear in their China facility don't meet US standards? Last time I checked, GoodYear is a US based corporation.

Goodyear is just as good as any other of the ST tire brands that have the Nylon overlay cap. There were some failures a few years or so ago, but again most were undocumented as to what actually caused the failure in the first place.
JIMNLIN
Explorer III
Jul 13, 2013
A flat tire on a torsion axle may place more load on the good tire as that system has no equalizer bar.
Its physically impossible for the equalizer bar to let that much weight (double the load as you say) on the good tire unless its broke or the wheel with the flat came off the axle.
Guess some folks have never chained up one end of a broken axle on a fully loaded trailer and drove 25-50 miles to the next town that had axle repair facility.
noe-place
Explorer
Jul 14, 2013
I noticed the same little cracks on our MH tires last spring. MH is parked inside out of sunlight/weather. Tires were 8 yrs old and I have never even considered replacing them till I noticed the cracks. To me a tire with cracks appearing in the sidewall is NOT normal so I replaced all of them immediately then went to Florida and broke them in. :B

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