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What are the best Tires?
Gerald Farris:
Gary,
I never recommend that anyone should run above the maximum pressure, but 5 PSI should not hurt, especially if the ambient temperature is above 60 degrees when you check the pressure because the pressure will go up with the temperature. I try to use 45 to 50 degrees as the ambient temperature to check tire pressure when possible.
Be sure to weigh each wheel individually, because your coach probably does not weigh the same on both sides, and in that case you use the weight for the heaviest side to set the pressure for both sides. With the generator on the left side of your coach, it is probably heavier on that side, and if it has a slide, the weight difference is even worse. My 2000 Marquis is over 1500 pounds heavier on the left side of the coach.
Gerald
Matthew Harger:
This post is becoming very educating, thank you all.
We just suffered a blowout of the left front steering tire this past Thursday while heading out of town for a weekend camping trip. This occurred at the absolute worst possible place, that being a 55mph two lane raised levee highway with no shoulder and 10 feet drops down to water on both sides. The blowout was extremely violent and immediately threw us into the opposing lane of traffic with a big rig approaching us. It took everything to avoid flying off of the levee road and get back into the correct lane and not going head on with the oncoming traffic. My wife and 10 yr old were in tears. By some stroke of luck the only damage to coach was the mudflap and wheel well liner. Les Schwab came out and did a highway fix and replaced both fronts with new tires. My appointment to get the 4 rears replaced at Schwab is tomorrow morning.
Since this coach was purchased used, but new to us, I should have replaced all the tires immediately but fell victim to the thought that since there was plenty of tread left on them they were fine.....bad choice.
I, like Gerald said above, never ever want to experience another blowout again. I really did not know anything about RV tires until this happened and have done a huge amount of reading up on the subject since our blowout.
From this point forward I will be getting the coach weighed, replace the tires at the five year mark irregardless of wear. will check tire pressures relentlessly on driving days, and will likely buy some tire pressure monitors in the hopes of preventing or detecting a blowout from happening in the future.
I was more worried about about leaks in the slide out and cosmetic fixes for our coach rather than issues of extreme safety.
Don't make the same, nearly fatal mistake I did.
Here is the link for a RV tire brochure from Firestone that I found online that was helpful in understanding some of the terms etc used in all of this tire stuff.
http://www.trucktires.com/bridgestone/us_eng/press/zip/RV_Brochure.pdf
http://www.trucktires.com/bridgestone/us_eng/press/zip/RV_Brochure.pdf
Grant Ralston:
Matt, thanks for your post, tires are now pushed to the top of my list of repairs. I haven't got to a scale yet with our 1998 Contessa but she is probably of similar weight as your Patriot. Please post which tires you decide to have LS install for you.
Grant
Matthew Harger:
Grant-
I had no real choice at the time of replacement, being stuck on the highway and the fact that LS only had 2 tires in stock that were the size I needed I took them. I ended up with the Firestone FS 560's load rated H in a 275/70R 22.5
I'm just going to put the same model Firestones on the rears tomorrow.
From what I've read they seem to get decent reviews and certainly can handle the weight loads etc of the coach. I'm sure they'll be fine for 5 years.
Found a local agriculture farm with full public scales a few miles from home that will weight all four for $5 and adjust all tire pressures accordingly.
When it's time to replace next time I'll do a bit more shopping as I hopefully will have more time.
LarryNCarolynShirk:
Remember to weigh each corner of the coach. Use the highest front axle corner for both the front axle tire pressures and the highest rear axle corner for all the rear tire pressures. Use that to look up the weight in your tire pressure chart to get the correct pressure for each axle. Check the chart, but most are rated at 70 degrees F ambient temperature. You need to adjust for the temprature when you check your tires.
All the corners will be different, and you want to use the same pressure all across each axle, and that is the highest corner.
Cheers,
Larry
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