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agesilaus's avatar
agesilaus
Explorer III
Feb 09, 2020

LT tires on your TT? Let the fight begin

The long Honeymoon just released a blog entry advocating using LT tires not ST. I have to admit I don't even know what brand of tires my TT has on it. They have been problem free. But I have had plenty of trouble in the past. They especially dislike marathons, no surprise. Take a look, you don't have to watch the whole thing they make their argument in the fir 6 or 7 minutes the rest is just doing it over and over.

But I'll say they make sense to me. Airstream is supply Michelin LT tires on their units as an option.

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  • gmw_photos's avatar
    gmw_photos
    Explorer
    Feb 13, 2020
    ktmrfs wrote:
    ....snip

    Since all of us have 15inch rims and need at least LRD tires, LT tires aren't really an option, so we just stick with ST's.



    I use good year wrangler HT in LT21575-15 on my horse trailer. Load range D. Tire rack has them or any GY dealer can get them.
  • JIMNLIN's avatar
    JIMNLIN
    Explorer III
    Feb 13, 2020
    Agree. I owned a LOT of Marathons. They all failed in short order. At every replacement, I upgraded size and load range.

    LOL...that brought back some painful memories about my dealing with Goodyear over their Marathon issues.

    When I was young and dumb I let a car tire shop down on the corner talk me into letting him setup all my trailer with the new and great 15"/16" Marathons all made in the USA back then. There were five trailers involved with 28 tires on the ground. In this type of work we can run 60k-80k miles a year so non had time to sit around and rot.
    Well long story short after 5-7 weeks myself and my other drivers was changing a ruined tire on just about every trip. I even had two spare per trailer. We were using Goodyear replacement warranty every week. Goodyear finally stopped replacing them under warranty.
    What to do.
    Finally a very experienced Goodyear truck tire dealer that had lots of commercial customers made me a deal on switching all my trailers to a LT tire.
    WOW....that move saved my small hauling business. With LT tires we could actually run 40k-60k miles till the tread bars showed...and zero issues. This type of work we can't afford using a tire with 8 or 9/32nds of tread depth. And we use the same size axles/15" and 16" tires and wheels as on any rv trailer.
    One thing I notice RV folks may brag they never had a issue with a ST tires in bla bla years never say how many miles on their tires. Most say they timed out...which tells me they don't tow much in a years time.
    Hell I have a utility trailer that sits probably 10 months out of a year with ST tires with 2610 DOT build date code. Guess I could brag no issues in 10 years also. But then thats not all the story.
  • LarryJM's avatar
    LarryJM
    Explorer II
    Feb 13, 2020
    Huntindog wrote:
    ScottG wrote:
    The 16" GY Endurance's have been problem free on our TT and negate the need for LT's. However, I hate the co. and would pay 50% more for a similarly performing tire just to avoid them.
    When the time comes for new tires, I'll be checking out all the options.
    Agree. I owned a LOT of Marathons. They all failed in short order. At every replacement, I upgraded size and load range. That TT started out life with 205/14 LRC. the last set of Marathons were 215/15 LRE. All failed. I fell for all the propoganda which was parroted here by many about the NEED to run STs. That 2001 TT ended up with Michelin XPS Ribs in 2006. I have not had a single hint of a tire problem ever since.
    When GY came out with the Endurance, many of the previous ST proponents here rushed out to buy them (in spite of their professed alliegance to the previous STs)
    I having already found a solution that worked.... will not buy a tire from a company that repeatadly told how great their previous tires were.... IOW, they cheerfully took thousands of dollars from me selling me junk tires. They no longer deserve any more of my money.

    For those of you trying out these new tires.. I wish you luck.
    If you start having trouble, you can always go to LTs then.... And tire size upgrades are possible in many cases. That 2001 TT that started out life with 205/14s LRC had 225/16 LREs when I sold it. Yes I had to make a few changes to make the upsized tires work.... But I had so many failures that I needed to do something to stop them. I grew weary of sitting on the side of the road in 110 degrees dealing with tire problems.


    Well your single data point on GY Marathon failures is 100% opposite of mine for the last 20+ years of me using exclusively GY Marathon's all the time except for one set of Kumho 857's. I would also say the 100,000's of other trailers out there running on GY Marathon's w/o all of them being on the side of the road due to tire failures seem to support my experience and not yours. As already mentioned when someone has tire issues I tend to believe that something is the root cause other than the tires themselves, usually underinflation, overloading or excessive speed, non of which anyone will ever willingly admit to especially in a public forum. I never had an actual failure with a GY Marathon, but did have two of the Kumho's actually fail (tread separation at under 6K miles). It is also worthy to note that I ran the GYs within 50lbs of their max load rating for the last 10+ years.

    With all that being said I did just this year go with a set of GY Endurance tires, but don't have enough experience yet to judge them.

    Larry
  • Huntindog's avatar
    Huntindog
    Explorer
    Feb 13, 2020
    ktmrfs wrote:


    Since all of us have 15inch rims and need at least LRD tires, LT tires aren't really an option.
    Rim size is real easy to change.

    If your luck changes, than you know what you can do about it.
  • ktmrfs's avatar
    ktmrfs
    Explorer III
    Feb 13, 2020
    between myself, a couple we often camp with and a neigbor that travels a lot we have a combined 350K miles or more so under our belts. Tires all have been ST tires.

    Failures: I had two nail punctures that I caught thanks to a TPMS system and was able to repair. I have about 75K miles total on my trailers.

    Neighbor that has over 200K miles failures: Zero
    our camper friends, Zero

    Tires have included Maxxis, Towmax, and Goodyear endurance.

    Since all of us have 15inch rims and need at least LRD tires, LT tires aren't really an option, so we just stick with ST's.

    Of all the other people I travel with only 1 person has had experienced a tire blowout.

    By comparison, We (DW and I) have logged 1.2M miles on our cars and trucks. In that distance I'v had at least 4 tires go flat, one was a blowout. The other 3 I caught as they went down fast but at least on a car/truck I was able to detect the tire going down. Now that works out to about 1 flat every 250K miles, on the same order or worse than the trailer mileage all of us have accumulated.
  • Huntindog's avatar
    Huntindog
    Explorer
    Feb 13, 2020
    agesilaus wrote:
    Well against my better judgement I'll fess up: LT tires in 16 inch wheels.

    The ST arguments most seem to be 'appeals to authority' not really based on data. Of course there isn't any real data set but most of the LT people seem to have a lot of good experience with the tires. No one said that they tried LT tires and had a bunch of blowouts. And lastly my bad experience with ST tires, with a TPMS and driving max 63 mph. All my blowouts have been on paved roads, frequently interstates. Not bouncing down smoe gravel potholed road.

    I'm just tired sitting on the side of some interstate fighting with the ERS for 45 minutes or more, or worse taking the tire off and putting the spare on.


    You won't be sorry.

    Another thing.. after awhile you will start to forget about what it was like to have tire issues.

    Many here say that STs need to have the pressures checked daily. some at every stop.

    Can you imagine doing this on your commuter vehicle?

    In time you will adjust to a life without tire worries.

    It took me awhile, but I have. I also tow at whatever speed I want to. LTs since 2006, without a single issue. And just about all of my trips involve bad roads. (100% boondocking)
  • agesilaus's avatar
    agesilaus
    Explorer III
    Feb 12, 2020
    Well against my better judgement I'll fess up: LT tires in 16 inch wheels.

    The ST arguments most seem to be 'appeals to authority' not really based on data. Of course there isn't any real data set but most of the LT people seem to have a lot of good experience with the tires. No one said that they tried LT tires and had a bunch of blowouts. And lastly my bad experience with ST tires, with a TPMS and driving max 63 mph. All my blowouts have been on paved roads, frequently interstates. Not bouncing down smoe gravel potholed road.

    I'm just tired sitting on the side of some interstate fighting with the ERS for 45 minutes or more, or worse taking the tire off and putting the spare on.
  • Mike134's avatar
    Mike134
    Explorer
    Feb 12, 2020
    agesilaus wrote:
    Well as the original poster, and new to this issue. I want to thank everyone, on both sides of the debate, for all this info. Which has helped me make up my mind.


    can't tease us like that What did you decide?
  • agesilaus's avatar
    agesilaus
    Explorer III
    Feb 12, 2020
    Well as the original poster, and new to this issue. I want to thank everyone, on both sides of the debate, for all this info. Which has helped me make up my mind.
  • kellem's avatar
    kellem
    Explorer
    Feb 12, 2020
    Where ya'll towing, experiencing all these tire issues.

    20 years - 4 trailers - not a single tire related issue.

    2 sets of Duro's , 2 sets of trailer kings.

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