Upgrading trailer tires
I have a 1 year old Jayco TT that weighs a little over 5000lbs loaded. A neighbor recommended I replace the tires that came on it with heavier duty tires to decrease the risk of a blow-out. Is this ...
Forum Discussion
lbrjet wrote:
I would spend my money on a TPMS instead. I too have over 20,000 miles on my trailer and am on my 2nd set of ST tires both made in China. The OEM tires were Duro 2100 radials and the second set I put on are Hercules Power STR. 6 years, 34 states and no blowouts.
I'm sort of in this line of thinking camp also. I've been running China Bomb Marathons since 1995 w/o a single blow out racking up over 100K total miles and too many tires to count from normal age out and one issue of alignment. I have run the tires on my current trailer since 2007 at within 100 to 150lbs of their max rated capacity. My one foray into a non ST "truck" type higher capacity tire (Kumho 857s) was a disaster. I had one "Blow Out" on one tire after only 15mo and around 6K miles with moderate damage to the trailer followed by two more tread failures within 6 mos and 2K miles of the first and both on the same day less than 200 miles apart.
I was running a TPMS, but didn't catch the first failure since I forgot to plug in my tire ranger extender amplifier, but caught the next two and avoided any damage issues so I'm firmly in the TPMS believer camp.
I am real anal about tire pressures at max side wall pressures and keeping my speed under 65 mostly at 60 and am extra vigilant about avoiding "FREEWAY POTHOLES" and other tire damaging situations. I actually have replace two other wise "apparantly good tires" twice on the same side of my trailer when I hit one of the infamous "GRAND CANYON" potholes on I-95 in the Carolinas heading down to Fl. I would do the same replacement strategy if I where to seriously "CURB" one or two tires at any speed. To me the couple hundred $$$ for two tires is peanuts vs. the potential unknown "DAMAGED TIRE CAPACITY AND RELIABILITY" from the "HIDDEN DAMAGE" after such TIRE KILLING events from bad road hazard encounters. I also, replace tires in pairs side wise when I do have a tire failure since I believe when you have a tire failure on one side of a trailer you damage the other tire on that side immediately due to overloading it and compromising it's load capacity and reliability.
Larry
