Tire Brand

[ret-miner]

Was just wondering has anybody have any comments this tire brand Jaxxon ST 205 75 R 15

[alexleblanc]

I'm sold on proper spec LT tires for 5ers, looking forward to many miles of trouble free travel. Won't seem me with China Bombs anytime soon, not worth the risk.

[kennethwooster]

After many years of towing trailers on the farm and now about 13 years of 5th wheels, I've found 2 different tires that have been trouble free. Both were LTs. I have a lot of sets of Maxxis. Right now on my 5th I have a set of Michelin LTs. The Michelins are 4 5o 5 years old. If I buy a new trailer and they are not name brand I get rid of them fast. I've only had one 5th that came with Michelins. all the rest I had to replace the tires.

[ret-miner]

I have mixed views on tire brands now,stopped in at trailer and rv sales centre and noticed all tires on travel and fifth plus cargo trailers had all none brand tires on them

[Hvyhauler]

As far as cheap st tires go I'll add this to the discussion.In 2008 my oem st tires began to fail on my current 5er one after another within a 100 miles or so of each other.

The cheap import st replacements also began to fail about 18 months later,luckily I caught all 8 tires before any catastrophic damage was done.

Now to the cheap part !! I worked in the industrial tire business for many many years and had access to distributor pricing as well as wholesale pricing for tires, otr / truck or passenger application.

My loose tire price for ST 235/80R/16 LRE ranged from $32.00 to $48.00 each and included several different import brands,some had the same tread pattern some didn't, some of the brands had the same DOT number hint...hint.

My distributor price on the least expensive Michelin LT 235/85R/16 LRE was $188.00 per tire (loose) I could buy 4 st's for what 1 Michelin cost !!

There is a huge difference between a high quality manufactured LT tire and a cheap overrated ST import... just pick 1 of each up and the difference is realized immediately,also pull on the sidewalls.

I ended up with 235/85R/16 LRE BFG Commercial TA's which were flawless... but got recalled and replaced with Michelin XPS Ribs of the same size and couldn't be more satisfied.

Returned from a south Georgia camping trip last week and the XPS ribs were slightly warm with the cruise set on 70mph turning 2000 rpm's.

[boshog]

Me Again wrote:
Come down to Arizona and spend some time with snowbirds that travel thousands of miles in a few days to get here and back home on these cheap ST tires and you will find a very high percent of failures. In the fall they are easy to identify, has the side of their trailer is still torn up.

What is the percentage of snowbird tire failures? One in ten? Come on guys, enough with the emotional posts, lets put down some facts and learn from it. What is a "cheap ST tire", are you going by country of manufactures, brand name, the price of the tire?

I did some simple research and discovered there is no US government mandated tire testing requirements. The closest I found is a recommendation from the NHTSA.

Light Vehicle Tire Standard
The agency proposes that a new tire standard FMVSS No. 139 apply to tires used on passenger cars, multipurpose passenger vehicles, trucks, buses and trailers with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less. It would apply to all P-metric and LT tires up to load range E, and would not apply to motorcycles.

www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/rulings/UpgradeTire/Econ/TireUpgradeII.html


Lack of Government Testing
Contrary to what many believe, tires are not subjected to any government testing, inspection or approval before they are sold. The tire industry is entirely self-regulated when it comes to design criteria. There are government regulations applicable to the industry, but the only government regulations that even arguably address tire safety are a set of wheel tests that were originally developed decades ago when tires did not even have steel belts to separate. The tests involve the tire company running a few sample tires for a matter of hours on a test wheel at varying speeds and loads, and also subjecting a few tires to some basic puncture resistance protocols. Determining whether a given tire design/production is safe is left entirely to the tire companies.

www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/general-information-about-tire-testing-and-regulation

[Me_Again]

Come down to Arizona and spend some time with snowbirds that travel thousands of miles in a few days to get here and back home on these cheap ST tires and you will find a very high percent of failures. In the fall they are easy to identify, has the side of their trailer is still torn up.

Driving in the hot SW fall and spring weather does not help.

My hat is off to Big Horn and Heartland. All of the new big Horns we have been looking at come with LRG Sailun OEM and 7K axles, which includes the smaller ones that could get by on 6K axles.

Chris

[RinconVTR]

gitane59 wrote:

Also it is factual that the government mandated tire testing regiment for ST tires for certification is much less severe than for LT tires.
years.

First of all, I would want tires on my vehicles tested far higher standards than my trailer tires. That's just common sense.

And the LT's you mount on trailers today are specifically designed for trailers only. There may be one left that can do both, but its rare to find that given size still on the road today.

So I am calling out your claimed fact as it's practically impossible to know what any given manufacture tests their tires to. You don't know, you can only speculate.

[boshog]

gitane59 wrote:
Please tell me all knowing why individuals who have had multiple sudden tire failures with off brand OEM ST Chinese tires suddenly stop having failures after changing to quality name brand tires.

These individuals report making no changes to their tire maintenance process or their driving behaviors after switching to brand name quality rubber yet the repeated failures cease.

I will continue to educate people based on facts I have discovered and experience I have gained towing various vehicles for over 40 years.

To separate emotions from fact we would need actual numbers of tire failures by brand name and other parameters. We already know few people check their trailer tire's for air pressure, monitor the tires for operating temperatures, tow over the speed limit of the tires, or have the axle alignment checked. Likely these numbers are not available so there isn't a way to know what the percentage of failures are with respect to proper operation and maintenance of the trailer tires and tire manufactures.

As far as "china bombs", where is the line to what tires are and are not china bombs? See my earlier post, are mine china bombs, one person's response, maybe. Reviews on the internet yield 4 and 5 stars on my trailer kings.

I'm very interested in this subject, I'm getting ready to go full time traveling around our country. I don't need the grief or expense of tire blow-outs. I did purchase a TPMS system for the trailer tires which also reports back tire temperatures.

[gitane59]

RinconVTR wrote:
I drive/pull various trailers with mileage totaling well over what the majority here total and have never owned an american made trailer tire NOR LT trailer tire. I am over 40 years old, a 3rd gen RV'er, and NEVER had a tire failure while I was at the wheel. This includes those little 8" donuts tires, which I've pulled thru dozens of state at 80mph when they were rated at 45mph!!!



Go find an oil brand or octane thread to loose sleep over. This is not the debate you are looking for.

Are you looking for a hero biscuit. you won't get one from me. More likely a drivers razzie for you from me.
Please tell me all knowing why individuals who have had multiple sudden tire failures with off brand OEM ST Chinese tires suddenly stop having failures after changing to quality name brand tires. These individuals report making no changes to their tire maintenance process or their driving behaviors after switching to brand name quality rubber yet the repeated failures cease.
Also it is factual that the government mandated tire testing regiment for ST tires for certification is much less severe than for LT tires.
AS for losing sleep over a debate, I don't loss sleep but I will continue to educate people based on facts I have discovered and experience I have gained towing various vehicles for over 40 years.

[RinconVTR]

I drive/pull various trailers with mileage totaling well over what the majority here total and have never owned an american made trailer tire NOR LT trailer tire. I am over 40 years old, a 3rd gen RV'er, and NEVER had a tire failure while I was at the wheel. This includes those little 8" donuts tires, which I've pulled thru dozens of state at 80mph when they were rated at 45mph!!!

Is it a matter of time? May be. Well then, the same can be said for motorcycle riders. The odds of hitting pavement are pretty good. Will it happen to you? Who knows. What ultimately has control over this fate? Hmmm? Not much that is fully in your control, now is it?

My problem here is blaming a particular tire, a variety of tires made outside of the USA, a tire that is mounted on practically EVERY trailer produced. The statistics are NOT in the favor of the "china bomb" haters on here. So give it a rest people.

Every and any tire can fail at any time. I can post pictures of all the gators on the interstate from tractor trailers, exceeding your ST failures by a large factor. Various blow outs on every other vehicle on the road, you have no chance to compare.

Go find an oil brand or octane thread to loose sleep over. This is not the debate you are looking for.

[gitane59]

FishOnOne wrote:
Our new camper has China bombs too so I'm going to run them for 1 year max and switch out to something else.

To date I've had excellent results from Goodyear Marathons but they're made in China also. :M

I've heard this before only to read where the same person comes back 10 month's down the road crying over a damaged trailer caused by one of the cheap OEM Chinese delivery tires exploding and during thousand of dollars damage to their new trailer..
Your call and Good luck.

PS Do you know the speeds at which the hauler towed your trailer from the factory to the dealer? Do you know whether the tires were properly inflated as it was towed from the factory to the dealer? Do you know how many times he curbed your new tires while towing form the factory to the dealer?
All these actions could damage the lowest cost, lowest specification cheap Chinese tires that the factories install. Do you really want to run them for a year????

[wilber1]

Me Again wrote:
wilber1, you should regularly buy lotto tickets! Chris

I never win a thing on those. I'm not trying to make a case for ST 's but I bet there are a lot more trailers using them than not. I don't see multitudes of them beside the highway with shredded tires. I think manufacturers push the limits when it comes to the weight ratings of the axles and tires they use and from the number of RV's that pass me, I also think a lot more of them say they don't tow over 65 than actually don't.

[kedanie]

CKNSLS wrote:

Fabguy wrote:
I must be in the minority here because I have been using Chinese made ST tires for over 15 years now, and have never had one failure.

Carlisle RH tires that have been out about 5 years have had very few failures reported. The most failures recently reported have been Maxxis, but yet they continue to be recommended on here without impunity.

Go figure. It's the same rhetoric on this forum. Nobody speeds with ST tires-yet I get passed all the time with rigs going faster than what the ST tires are rated for.

I'll stop here because my last post was apparently deleted.

When you drive at 55mph most others will be passing constantly. Also, when your traveling with a small TT at around 6,000 pounds it doesn't stress the tires much when combined with the slow speeds you claim to drive.

You continue to compare apples to oranges when flaunting your precious Carlisle tires on the 5er forum.

Keith

[laknox]

TucsonJim wrote:

CKNSLS wrote:
The "China bomb"comments really are not useful and are getting really old....more reasons people are feeling in droves from this forum.

Let them flee. Evidently you haven't been the victim of these cheaply made pieces of junk.

Here's a couple of examples I've had:

Last month while driving on I-10, I lost the tread off of a Westlake (Chinese) ST tire doing significant damage to the undercarriage of my FW. The tire was still fully inflated at 80psi after the tread came off. The tire was also running at less than 90F based on the TPMS that was monitoring it. My FW was not overloaded, and I never exceed 65mph, even though the tire was rated for 75mph. There was no evidence of a belt separation or road hazard. I'll bet this kind of failure is rare on a Sailun, Maxxis, or Goodyear G614.

A couple of years ago, a CHINA BOMB that was mounted in the spare position of my trailer actually blew up with enough force to damage the siding on the trailer. It had never been on the road, was less than one year old and was covered with a spare tire cover. In other words, it was NEW with zero miles on it and inflated to the sidewall pressure of 80psi.

I've had a full set of Chinese tires with slipped steel belts upon delivery of a brand new FW. So they only had the mileage that they incurred during delivery with an empty coach.

So based on my experience, these tires are dangerous and have earned the title CHINA BOMB. I'll keep saying it, and if you don't like it, that's too bad.

CHINA BOMB, CHINA BOMB, CHINA BOMB, CHINA BOMB.

I agree with you, Jim. I've been real lucky with my tires not causing any damage, but all 8 of my first 2 sets of bombs failed. First one went in the second year after < 1000 miles. The other 3 failed in the 3rd year with <2500 total miles. 2nd set lasted 6 years before all 4 separated, fortunately without catastrophically failing. I =knew= I was pushing my luck and tried to keep as light as possible and drove slower. I now have the Carlisle RH going into their 3rd year. Yes, I did get my money's worth on the 2nd set, but they still =did= fail.

Lyle

[ACZL]

boshog wrote:
Well folks, I've got to tell you that reading the several tire issue threads on this forum has me very concerned. I've seen pictures of tire failures from many brands including the Marathons and frankly, I have no idea were the line between a "china bomb" and a dependable tire lays.

So I bought a new Montana 3790RD last season and the wife and I plan on going full time traveling the country next year. This is the tire that came with the Montana;



Trailer King ST Radials
ST235/80 R16 124/120L
Load Range E
Max load single 3520 pounds, dual 3080.
Maximum pressure 80PSI

Are these tires "china bombs"?

Sounds like it to me. I'd consider LT's in either E or G load range. Replaced all the "LT bombs" on our coach last year w/ new LT name band tires (but CRS at the moment and cannot recall which brand, but Cooper sticks out). Did a 1500-2000 miles trip in temps 85-95 at 70 mph, 21k and no problem