Install new tires/grease bearings by self?
Our camper is a 2012, we bought in 2013, and have never greased bearings (whoops!!). We tow about 500 miles each summer. Questions: From reading on here, it sounds like it is time for new tires (jud...
Forum Discussion
Growing up around an auto service shop in an era when front wheel bearings were not "permanently lubricated" I learned to pack bearings before I was nine years old, so I would probably do that job myself. It can be messy, but I still have a tub of bearing grease in my garage, and can't remember not having the grease any time in the past forty years. Packing grease is not the problem. The problem is learning to get the hub adjusted right when you reassemble it.
Every place I've bought tires included installation and "lifetime" balancing in the tire price, or at worst showed it as an added charge of $10-15. When tires still had tubes in them, and we never much bothered about wheel balancing, I changed many car-sized tires with a mallet and 2-3 tire irons, up to an hour's labor per tire. I quit doing that when the world switched to tubeless tires, because the physical effort became huge if you didn't have the power equipment for the job. There are guys out there doing road service for truck tires that still change out tires the hard way, but at my age I won't be doing it, I'll pay the tire shop.
FWIW, when I took six light truck tires in to have valve stems replaced with metal, involving unmounting the tire on one side of the wheel, my tire shop did the job for $10 a wheel, including cost of the new stems, and removing/installing on my motorhome sitting out in the driveway. The work is hard enough it is worth paying to have it done. Don't make your husband try to do it.
Buy the tires online? My local dealer buys the tires online, sells them to me at the price the online supplier would charge me retail.
Every place I've bought tires included installation and "lifetime" balancing in the tire price, or at worst showed it as an added charge of $10-15. When tires still had tubes in them, and we never much bothered about wheel balancing, I changed many car-sized tires with a mallet and 2-3 tire irons, up to an hour's labor per tire. I quit doing that when the world switched to tubeless tires, because the physical effort became huge if you didn't have the power equipment for the job. There are guys out there doing road service for truck tires that still change out tires the hard way, but at my age I won't be doing it, I'll pay the tire shop.
FWIW, when I took six light truck tires in to have valve stems replaced with metal, involving unmounting the tire on one side of the wheel, my tire shop did the job for $10 a wheel, including cost of the new stems, and removing/installing on my motorhome sitting out in the driveway. The work is hard enough it is worth paying to have it done. Don't make your husband try to do it.
Buy the tires online? My local dealer buys the tires online, sells them to me at the price the online supplier would charge me retail.
