Goodyear New Tires
Almost three years and about 25K miles since we bought our travel trailer I finally had the “China Bomb” tires replaced. Trailer now has 4 brand new Goodyear Endurance HD tires.
I had heard so many horror stories about the chinese tires mounted on new Travel Trailers and 5th Wheel I was worried. I will say the older tires probably could have gone another 5K, but I didn’t want to chance it.
Twenty-five thousand miles on these tires is rare, but I pulled it off. Admittedly I rarely went above 65mph (100kph) and I made sure the weight of the trailer was kept below it’s max weight. Even so they started to show some wear, largely because they were a bit under-inflated.
Because these trailers are manufactured on a extreme cold weather state the tires are filled with nitrogen. South of the mason-dixon line good luck finding nitrogen to refill them. I know they say you can mix the air, but I didn’t want too. Now all 4 tires are filled with normal air.
I really need to talk about the process of getting these tires changed. I knew what I wanted and started calling RV places. All of them said they could order them, but it would take a month or more to get them replaced. Plus I wasn’t real thrilled with the price.
On a whim I called a local Discount Tire. The person I talked to said they only had 3 in stock and need to order one. It would take two days. Sure enough two days later(on a Saturday) they called back and said the tire was in. They gave me an appointment for the following Monday, which I had to change to Tuesday. We are now up to six days from order to install.
On the way to Discount Tire traffic was backing up further than normal. Apparently the Wake Forest Police and Wake County Sheriff’s had a big something happening. Rubbernecking was in progress. I called Discount Tire and they said that’s fine just come on in.
When I arrived one of the sales people told me where they wanted my truck and trailer and they said someone will be out shortly. Ten minutes later one of the tire changers pulling two car jacks went to the passenger side of the trailer and started jacking the trailer up. I looked into my driver side mirror and another person was setting up to jack the other side of my trailer up. Five minutes later all four tires were off the trailer. Less than 30 minutes later all new four tires were back on.
I was leaving the parking lot in less than an hour later at a price I found more than reasonable. A total of 6 days from the time I told the sales guy on the phone to order the tire to having all 4 installed. The RV places wouldn’t even order the tires will I showed up and they wouldn’t allow that for a month or more.
I would say with all the restrictions on RV camping everyone is getting their RVs worked on; however, it was like this before this pandemic.