:af: :af: As some of you know I am known for blowing up trailer tires. I have tried every brand of 15" trailer tires with no luck. They always seem to kick off the carcass and trash the fender and side of my trailer. Well on this past weekend on the way home from a camping trip I lost a General 225/75/15 on the passenger side which wasted the fender on my new Featherlite trailer. I had already lost a tire on the drivers side on a trip back from Fla and messed up that fender. When I got home from this trip on Monday I also noticed another tire on the drivers side ready to let loose:af: I freakin' had it!!!! Got a set of 16" 6 lug wheels and a set of 225/75/16 Load range E Goodyear G159 real truck tires. So $1,100 later I have a set of REAL TIRES that should hold up. Do you guys have a hard time with 15" trailer tires? I have tried Goodyear Marathon(JUNK) Carlisle(OK?) General(OK?) Towmaster( best of the 15" tires IMHO). I put alot of miles on my trailers, But JEEZ I have horrible luck. My old 38' gooseneck with 6 tires has lost 5 tires from SC to TX before. I don't drive that fast either. ALot of times I would be overloaded, But many other times I would loose as many running empty. PS. If anybody needs any 6 lug 15" trailer rims let me know. I have a set of 4. They are silver in color and NOT rusty.
Mikey, I recently blew out 2 perfectly good E rated G159's... I thought they were the best... Goodyear says they are now obsolete... you must have got G159 leftovers. My incident was in late March in Daytona, and they were obsolete about a month before that... Goodyear switched me to the newest and greatest replacements, and they are just awesome towing tires. I'll get ya the model numbers tomorrow. JH
Prolly the G760 series. My brother runs the G159's on all of their fleet at the city he works at. Has always had great luck with them.
BTW..I knew the 159's were disco'd and searched for somebody who still had 4 of them. Oh well time will tell. I am headed for Dallas on Sunday.
I think they are 760's... anyways, the Gyear store in Daytona is a HUGE branch of a BIGGER company... they had the 159's in stock but flat refused to sell me them again for a heavy trailer, he said for medium duty trucks they are fine, but every heavy trailer he puts them on... they pop.. quite frankly, I was very happy with them, until I lost 2 perfect tread tires within 30 miles of each other.. JH
Well hopefully they will be OK on my 3100lb Featherlite. I refuse to overload this one like I did my 38 ft'r. Now that I tow with the prison bus I don't haul the rediculous load I use to with the Cummins dually. Plus the van allows me to split the weight between the van and trailer.
Jim, How did your 159's fail? Blowout? Go flat? or loose the tread? Were the 2 that failed on the same side and if so was the second flat caused by the first one?
This is a good subject. A valve stem split over the winter on my trailer, this was a sign to me it was time for metal stems and four new tires. (trying to prevent joining Mike in the blowout club) Anyway, the local store was pushing Carlisle......I went on line to an RV site and there was a thread about how shitty the Carlisle's were. I mean no one had anything good to say about them and they were failing at low low miles. On the same thread someone said "a few years ago no one had anthing good to say about the Goodyear Marathons, but now folks weren't having the problems". Trailer tire quality seems to be a moving target. Another goofy thing is the factory rims on my trailer are rated FAR below the tires axles and GVWR. o No:
And then there's me ....... Last year, the NIGHT before Certification, Tim noticed that one of my Goodyear Marathons had tread seperation. We swapped that out so that I could make it up to Certification. On the way home, the OTHER tire on the same side blew out (also from tread seperation). Put the spare on to limp it home. The next day, I went to buy (4) new tires and a new spare. The tire store sold me on the Carlisle Bias-Ply trailer tires. They are 8-ply trailer tires. My load range "E" tires on my new dually Dodge are only 6-ply o No:. So far, so good, but I definitely agree ..... it seems like there are 50 different ideas and opinions on these things. All I know is that it SUCKS being on the side of the road changing a trailer flat !! :af:
Mikey, I now have 235-85-16 model G647 G-year's, I had 215-85-16 model G159's. Both are E- rated, I think the G647 is really a 12 ply in 10 ply rating... frickin awesome tire... In all fairness, Pace may have used the wrong valve stems in the first place, when they mounted the tires at the factory on aluminum rims, and they were rubber/metal, not 100% metal, and 2 of them literally melted and delaminated from the inside out. I still have them both here as samples. I used those tires for about 15,000 miles, with no issues, until I raised the cold tire pressure from 70# to 75# cold, rated at 80# cold, which is about 77-82 hot, then bammo..... I lost the right rear first, and the carcass went into the following vehicles grille and windshield :af: BIG mess, then I lost the right front 30 miles later. I can only fairly surmise that the valve stem delaminated from heat (which it did do) and the tire got low on pressure, heated up more, and BAMMO... The old stem is metal and vulcanized unto the rubber insert. I was VERY happy with the 159's until the HUGE Gyear store told me they were obsolete for various *service* reasons. They showed me 3 different truck rated stems with 3 different pressure ratings. What I had was rated for 65#. Even with new 100% metal stems, they still refused to sell the 159's to me, because the sidewall rating was still insufficient for my load. $1148 later, I had 5 new upsized, and uprated, 235-85-16 G647 tires and the trailer now pulls better than it ever has. Pace sells the trailer with the 215-85 tire, go figure... I always run HEAVY, and I accept that, and I always haul a$$ anyways, rarely below 77 mph and usually higher at times... I routinely gross out between 20,400# to 22,500#, my truck weighs 7650# with me in it, and full fuel. I only have 6000# or 7000# 8 lug trailer axles, but the trailer weight on the scales runs about 12,000-12,600 hooked up, with the rest on the truck axles... trailer loaded. Unhooked, is about 14,850# trailer weight, pretty stout weight for a bumper puller. This new trailer would literally flex my Dmax frame so much that.... well, thats another story in itself... No more Dmax. HTH JH
The part that makes it hard is that there is only a finite number of tires available in 15" for the 6-lug axles. Do they make 16", 6-lug rims ? If they do, I may be inclined to upgrade to those my next go-'round ??? o No:
Case, on my 28' Classic that I sold to Keith Egan, it had 16" aluminum rims, 6 lug. They were American racing rims, with Michelin 10 ply's. JH
Tires Jim , Do you think it's the excessive cold and warm tire pressures or do you think the tires just suck??? I don't max my tires and so far OK. I have the Marathon's on my 28' classic-Ride great...( knock on wood)
The upgrade to 16" sounds like a good idea. The tire stem issue also came up on that RV website. A guy thought his first two shreddings were stem related after his third tire was caught prior to shred.......leaking stem. My first marathons went six years, the sun caught up with them before they wore out. I put marathons back on........we'll see. Mine hasn't seen the miles or have the weight but sun and storage are killers on trailer tires too. I park mine on concrete and make sure the tires are not side loaded from turns required to put it on the pad. I've seen some trailers parked with the tires jacked out of shape, or stored on gravel causing distress. I wonder if an extreme load causes tire side load due to axle flex. o No:
Park in the woods Mine sits on its Nanking trailer tires in the woods on pine needles where the sun don't shine. Knock on wood.
Casey, A big 10-4 on the 16" 6 luggers! That's just what I did. About $64.00 per rim and about a buck-80 per tire. The 225/75/16 is actually about a 1/2" shorter than our 225/75/15 tires. It is however about 3/4" wider also. No clearance issues. All trailer rims be the 15 or 16 inchers should have a ZERO OFFSET according to my local trailer dealer who got my rims for me. Learned the hard way a Mopar 5 lug will fir a 5 lug trailer( the stolen Pace from last year), but the 4.5" backspace will cause the tire to rub the inner fender and KA-BLAMMO!
Another issue about trailer rims...My old Pace 14X7 enclosed had 15" 5 luggers with 225/75/15's and the kept going flat. Couldn't find the leak. Turns out the rims were splitting, fatigue cracks on the inside running radially with the rim. Welded them to get going, But the continued to crack. Eventually 3 of the rims did this.
Tim, i'm not sure about the extreme temp differential thingy, I don't have that problem :grin: What I do have is.. 1 enclosed car, 1 open car, 2 Sea Doo, 1 motorcycle, and 3 boat trailers. 8 trailers total in the warehouse... I have had miserable luck with Marathons. The Towmasters on the boat trailers work great. I AM GOING TO ATTRIBUTE THE G159 FAILURES TO BAD VALVE STEMS, AND NOT THE TIRES THEMSELVES. I've had Bridgestone R265 rib, Firestone R4S rib, Marathons, Michelin XPS rib, Goodyear G159 rib and now G647. I blew out all 4 Bridgestones on one trip, no Fstones blown(except on the truck front once, and almost crashed the rig off a median hill) blew every Marathon on every trailer they were on, no Michelin's blown, 2 G159's blown, blew 2 Carlisles on one SeaDoo trailer. I always used American Racing Outlaw series 16" 6 lug or 8 lug aluminum rims, zero offset, on the two enclosed car trailers and two boat trailers. whewwwwwwwwwwwww JH
