Other reasons ST tires fail??

Huntindog wrote:

LarryJM wrote:

Lantley wrote:
In the end my experience has been ST tires are inferior. Had all kinds of issues. They ALL magically went away when I upgraded to LT tires. There are many people that tell the same tale. Problems,blowouts,flats with ST's changed to LT tires and all problems solved.
One of the issues that still exist are the tires are marginally rated. The idea that all 4 tires carry equal weight is part of the fallacy. One tire is often overloaded and over stressed from the start. Floorplans are not balance by weight. Why do we expect the tires to carry equal weight?
ST tires are built to marginal/inferior standards vs. and LT. ST tires are not built to a standard that entails transporting humans. They are built and regulated to a cargo only standard. In the end they are inferior. LT's are built for passenger carrying vehicles and are simply a more reliable tire built with better quality control as a result.
LT tire upgrades continue to resolve the blowout issue.

I'm not so sure one can just assume like you have done that there is significant unequal loading on tires on a tandem axle trailer especially side to side. Unless the trailer is being towed in a non level configuration front to back there should be minimal differences in the front and back tires on the same side. As to side to side I have actually weighed my trailer fully loaded side to side and there was only a 50lb difference in the weights and that is for a totaltwo axle weight of close to 7,000lbs. I would think a better assumption for the majority of trailers is they are designed to have a fairly even side to side wt. distribution unless you have significantly modified the insides. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I think one can safely assume that there is a fairly good side to side balance in the axle weights for a factory configured TT/5er.

Larry

I had access to race care suspension setup scales when I had my previous TT. A seperate scale for each wheel.
I don't recall the numbers, but do remember being surprised at how much they differed.
Even if the TT left the factory with perfectly distributed weights on all tires....That all goes out the window when the consumer starts loading it.
Even in use, water leaves the fresh tank and ends up in the black or grey tank. depending on just where the tanks are located, this alone can throw the weight distribution off.

Too bad you can't remember the actual numbers, but I still think the opposite of what you think might be true. One real issue with using things like race car or similar scales is that they are fine for things like cars where the weights on the tires are distributed at for separate corners, but on tandem axle trailers putting a scale under one tire on a side will give you erronous numbers since the two tires on that side are not on the same level, but are basically uneven ... like having the trailer not level front to back. For a normally loaded and level trailer, I would bet there is most likely 10% or less variance from the weight on the lightest wheel to the weight on the heaviest wheel and those two biggest deltas won't be on the same side of the trailer. Again, the trailer must be fairly level front to back (torsion axle trailers are most sensitive to this) and the wheels on each side have to be on a flat surface. My WAG would be most trailers will see less than a 200lb delta between all 4 wheels for a pair of 3500lb axles and somewhere around a 100lb MAX delta between the wheels on the same sides of the trailer. To me that is not significant or bad.

As far as tanks again I'm sure there are exceptions, but most I think you will find are basically centered between the frame rails so they won't cause side to side weight variances, only front to back and again as long as the trailer is level the uneven contribution between axles should not be that significant.

Of course I'm assuming a normally loaded trailer and not one completely empty since there by design there will be the max side to side wt. differences since things like the Frig, water heater, and the kitchen area will be empty.

Larry