Tires, Tires, Tires!

[stargirl96]

We plan to replace at least two tires on our MH. I've heard Michelin and Firestone have good tires. But I'm curious about who to get them from. Do the major chains do tire mounting on motorhomes and do you trust them?

By the way, we had two tire blowouts on a recent trip. They were the two tandem tires on the passenger side. The inside one completely came apart on a rough New Mexico road. An emergency roadside repair guy replaced it for us. He looked at the tire next to it and said it looked fine. The next day in Oklahoma the tire deemed to be okay blew. We used our roadside assistance plan for this 2nd incident and felt like we were gouged. So far, we don't see any damage other than to our pocket book. Recently we had all tires checked out and properly inflated.

[WayneLee]

FMCA has a program called the Michelin Advantage. The program covers all Michelin tires from passenger car sizes up the the 22.5 Class A tires. The money you save will more than save the membership dues.

When I bought six 22.5 tires for my Class A, I saved about $100.00 per tire. You buy the tires directly from Michelin who will then ship them to a dealer near you. You pay Michelin directly (by credit card) and pay the dealer to mount and balance the tires. On my Class A, I used Dyna Beads to balance the front tires.

Now, that I have a Class C, I will still use the Michelin Advantage program to buy my tires when they "age out".

[j-d]

If you have two new Transforce and only want to buy two more, get two more Transforce and run them on the rear with the two you just got.

If you want Michelins, get four and run them on the rear. Move Transforce to front.

Do you have a spare? If you do, should be "in date" (let's say 5-6 year Born On Date.

Nothing wrong with Transforce or Michelin LTX. I like the way Michelin warrantied so many LTX a few years ago. I remember how Firestone cheaped out on their responsibility for some of their passenger car tire failures years back. I don't know a thing about Hibdons Tire, but can say I've found Discount to be a very easy place to deal with.

Be sure you get good metal valve stems. 2" in front and spare. They can be ordinary stems. For the rears, get Dually Valves. Camping World has good pricing on them and runs specials besides.

[stargirl96]

We now have two new Firestone Transforce tires on our motorhome following the tire blowouts, and we will replace the others soon. We checked prices at Discount Tire and Hibdons. Discount Tire has Michelins and Hibdons carries Firestone. I would like to get Michelins, but think we should stick with Firestone all the way around since we have the two new Firestone tires. Do you agree?

[Bordercollie]

I check internet for best prices on correct type Michelin tires and then call my local Discount Tires and Allen Tire Store to see if they will match the prices including mounting, balancing, taxes and disposal fees. Expect to pay around $300 apiece. They may have to get tires from a warehouse, make sure that tires are recent manufacture by DOT date codes. Not necessary to replace spare tire if less than 10 years old and unused. Old spare is ok to use for trip to the tire store at reduced speed, don't rely on it.

[avan]

As a former fulltimer (nearly 15 yrs/400,000 towing miles) pulling a 40' 22,000 lb fiver, I've purchased many new tires for my rig and have always used a tire store local to wherever I happened to be at the time. Can't recall ever having a shop refuse a sale/installation though I will confess that I always checked out the shop as far as ample parking/service area before I got a quote. I won't bother you with the tire brand etc since it was a fiver but post this part only because my fiver was larger and heavier than most class C's and it was never a problem to get service.

I now have a 30' Class C and last month replaced 4 yr old tires with just under 20,000 miles with a new set of Firestone Transforce. Easy tires to do a price comparison on and, as with the fiver, getting service was no issue. I trust the major chains if for no other reason than they probably wouldn't become a major chain if they weren't trustworthy as to consistency of price and service. I do watch as they dismount and mount the tires on my aluminum wheels just to make sure they don't scratch them.

[Community Alumni]

No real complaints about the original Continental tires. But, for some reason, the outside shoulders on the front tires scrubbed and wore faster than the rest of the tread. Three tire rotations in 40,000 miles was needed to get even wear on all six tires. I got Michelin tires at Discount tires and after 15,000 miles I see no uneven wear. No alignment was done. On advice from some seasoned truck tire people, I will likely not rotate the tires and only monitor the tire wear until there is any evidence of an issue. One option I was offered was to put steering tires on the front and traction tires on the rear duals. I went with the same tire all around for traction. What I was told comes from truck fleets that put on a lot of miles. The tires get replaced as needed. Rotation is extra labor. I will wear a tire out before it ages out. In my case if I did not rotate the original tires, I would only have had to replace two tires and then four tires later. I did the math and it works. As they say, your mileage will vary. There are several brands that would be a good alternative to Michelins.

[midnightsadie]

MAKE SURE YOU insist on metal valve stems. and I,d go michlin.

[F1bNorm]

We've had good service from Americas Tire/Discount Tire and they seem to be all over the USA. We had handling issues with a new set of Mich LTX and they willingly exchanged them for Mich XPS for the difference in price. All our family cars have tires from them and they have been good about tire repairs, rotations, pressure checks.

[toedtoes]

Call the tire shops and ask if they can handle your RV. When you ask, find out if they can handle more than just replacing tires. I had used a shop when I got the clipper to put new tires on it, but when I needed some other work done with the bearings or some such, they couldn't handle that work with the RV. I ended up finding another shop that can handle all my wheel related work.

Also, many local shops will match online tire prices, so once you identify the tires you want, check online for the best price and then ask your local shop if they'll match it.

You should also check the age on all your other tires - it's possible they're all ready for replacement...

[Bordercollie]

Tires are expensive but they are a major weak point in RV's. They can go bad just sitting parked for months on end with sun and heat and "lack of exercise" causing cracks in the sidewalls. RV tires older than 4-5 years old by DOT date codes printed on tires, may look like new with plenty of tread depth, but if sidewalls are cracked they can come apart or blow out especially when getting a beating on a hot day. Typical tire store guys don't necessarily understand RV tires but when they tell you that sidewalls are cracked, they are not usually trying to grab your money. Keep covers over your tires to block sun damage and drive the rig once per month to keep tires in good condition.

[j-d]

It'd be nice to know the Make/Model/Size of the RV. If it's a small to mid size Class C on Ford...

The Firestone Transforce seems like a good tire and one that can be bought at a discount price. I'd call it equivalent to Michelin LTX-MS/2

Speaking of Discount, Discount Tire (America's Tire in the West) will do RV tires no issue. Some big boxes like Sam's Club won't.

Ford doesn't suggest rotation on rear tires. I rotate Spare to Left Front, Left Front to Right Front, Right Front to Spare. More on that to follow...

This is my opinion, but I believe the Right Rear Inner leads the worst life of all the tires. It's in out of the air flow, so it runs warm. It also carries a little more load than the outer if the road is severely crowned. So does the Left Inner, but: At least on Ford, it's close to the hot tailpipe, and worse, the Right OUTER gets run off the edge of the pavement. When that happens, the Inner takes the full right rear load.

Tires never forget an offense. When that inner blew, the outer was suddenly and severely overloaded. May have looked OK, but it was angry and you were gonna pay.

Here's what I'd do:

Round out your set of new tires. If you have two new but different ones, either use both on the front or get a matching one for the front and make the other one a spare.

I think you should have a spare, and that spare should be a young tire. Our prev owners never used the OEM spare, and I scrapped it when we bought 07 new tires. Still had mold marks, factory label, never on the ground. That's why I rotate the spare with the fronts. Would rather mount a spare that was young and had been driven than one that was young but never on the ground.

You don't want to mount a spare and have it fail in 50 miles because it was aged out and you have 100 miles to go!

Put custom valve stems on your four rear tires and 02" metal stems on your fronts and spare. I have Borg (Dually Valve) and those are the least expensive option right now. That's thanks to Camping World selling them now at a very attractive retail price, and they often have sales/specials/coupons. The more expensive Tire-Man sets are the same stuff. Not a bit better. Both Bill FalkenBorg and Chuck Carvitto are great guys with good products. I bought Bill's Dually Valves because that's what a shop (Six Robblees) was carrying and the price was very good. Either will give you great performance, better than just about any other option. Just put GOOD STEMS all around!

All the LT225/75R16 tires carry the same Load and Pressure Ratings. Even if your coach is lighter like E350 chassis, you'll probably end up with the Load Range E tires rated to the higher axle load of E450.

If your coach isn't maxed out on weight, I'd say get LTX, TransForce or the like. If you know you're at max axle weights, like we are, then consider a "commercial" tire in that same 225/75R16E size. The Michelin XPS RIB and Bridgestone Duravis R250 come to mind. They aren't rated any higher, but are built to be a little tougher. I'd heard the LTX tire in 225/75R16E has been reinforced with an extra steel ply. Might be worth investigating.

[DrewE]

Since the tire life is not generally limited by treadwear, there's no big reason to rotate the tires on most motorhomes. You go to extra work to end up getting rid of tires which are old but have even more tread left.

Whether a tire store will work on a motorhome or not varies with the store. Best probably is just to call them and ask. Most class C's are on van chassis, and the wheels and tires are not particularly unusual sizes for vans or larger pickup trucks; it's more a question of whether they have a lift or a jack to use on the motorhome, and (in the case of a jack) if they're willing to go to the effort of doing so.

If you do rotate the tires on a motorhome, bear in mind that it's best to keep each of the two tires in a dually pair together so they wear about the same. Having one of the two larger than the other leads to extra wear and heat (they have to turn together since they're bolted together, and if one is a bit larger diameter than the other, the difference has to be made up by slipping slightly. For this reason it's also a very good idea to keep the pressure in the two as close to equal as possible.)

If your tires are directional or you're unlucky enough to have different wheel designs for the front and rear or for the inner and outer duallies, that further limits what you can do to rotate them. Most tires are not directional (if they are, they're marked with an arrow to show the rotation direction), and at least the Ford chassis generally has identical wheels all around.

[stargirl96]

The outside tire was 4-5 years old--don't remember the number. The inside tire--who knows? Another question is do you rotate tires on a motorhome?

[mgirardo]

We had all 6 tires replaced a few months ago, after a blowout to an inside rear tire. Our tires were 7 years old at the time. They looked to be in great shape with very minor cracking on the sidewall. With 29k miles on them, they looked to have plenty of tread left.

We replaced them with Michelin LTX M/S2 tires (stock were the LTX M/S). We have a trusted repair shop that we took the motorhome to. I also had them install TireMan's solid valve stems at the same time.

We have AAA and they have been very good to us, but they will not replace a tire if we don't have a spare. Just to put our spare on, the mobile tire repair guy charged AAA $250. He would have probably charged more than double to put a tire on the wheel and then mount it.

-Michael