Tires & Shocks…

Scroll down to see stories on the shocks, and rear dual tire changes…

New steer tires – June ’16 

If you already own a RV, you know how expensive tires can be…especially the 22.5″ tires used on Class A rigs. They are, or should be, your first concern before you leave on a trip, and worthy of a check during and at the end of a trip. A blown tire can cause thousands of dollars of loss, including your life. So, like most, I’ve grudgingly learned to pay attention to them, and treat them to much more care, unlike the way I treated my car and pickup tires in the past.

When I bought this ’02 Winnebago Journey, all the tires that were easily visible had plenty of tread. That can be a good sign, but that’s not enough. I had the shop tech prepping the RV before I drove it off the consignment lot to give me the date codes off the tires. All of them were around seven years old. Except for one. It was 10 years old. It was actually the best looking of the lot though. No sidewall cracks for some reason. All the others have tiny spider cracking. They’re all Michelin 235/80R22.5 XRV tires and Michelin XRV tires have had a problem with sidewall cracking for years. It’s now looking as though they are purposely NOT adjusting their formula or processes in order to fix that early failure issue in favor of offering a ‘deep discount’ to people who end up with deep cracks and complain. So the tire is defective if the cracks are deep enough, but if a owner complains, Michelin will give you a discount on new tires. Whoopee ding.  This is pure speculation on my part, but I’m deeply suspicious of Michelin after all the stories I’ve read on RV’er forums about their XRV tires quality, prices, and practices. The other thing is that most RV experts, even those that don’t sell tires, suggest an RV tire will ‘age out’, meaning that if it isn’t driven a lot, like in the case of my tires, which have date codes of early 2009, except for one of the fronts which has a ’06 date code. Of course since I bought from a consignment lot, and they are known to shuffle tires around extensively, I really have no idea what the history is. RV tires need to have miles put on them regularly to keep the oils migrating around the tire and from developing dry rot, or a flat spot from sitting in one place for too long. But if they haven’t aged out, which for me is 10 years old if they still look halfway decent, I’ll keep using them.

Because of all that, I wanted to get rid of that 10 year old ’06 steer tire asap. A blown steer tire is dangerous at most speeds over around 35 MPH and can do much damage. If the front two were Bridgestone, I would have just gone ahead and driven it for several thousand miles more. As it was, I only put 2,000 nervous miles on it between Mesa and Portland, Oregon.

After arriving here, I spent some time online searching and researching. Although there is a minority suggesting a 10 year old tire is fine, most were saying a Michelin XRV that old is a calamity waiting to happen. Michelin says it’s good for 10 years if regularly inspected internally. I have no idea if that’s been done in the past. OK. So, researched a little more, and found Michelin XRV in that size at $450 average, plus shipping. Then you have to figure in mounting and balancing. I discovered that the size used, 235/80R22.5 is called an odd size and people have actually been told at tire places there is no substitute size and only Michelin carries it. This made people very angry as you might expect and so you have them looking for discounts…like the offer by Michelin because of the cracks, or joining a RV’ers club where you can get 25% off new Michelin tires.

I went a different route. I researched the heck out of that tire size and yes, indeed, there is only one manufacturer of that size, and it’s Michelin (that’s likely to change soon). But I know better then to give up too easily and soon found an online Tire Size Calculator. One of the handiest calculators I’ve ever found for tires. It allows quickly comparing different tire sizes in an easy to use format, and shows the differences as percentages along with a cartoon showing the representative sizes overlaid. Also found on line a handy Tire Speed Rating and Tire Load Index Chart. These three charts are definitely necessary to accurately spec out your tires.

Using the tire size calculator, I plugged in different sizes I found on truck tire web sites until I had a few tire sizes I thought would work. At least on the front of the RV. But one size stood out, a truck size 255/70R22.5. It’s almost an exact replacement for the Michelin. The comparison is shown in the chart below. Now, I’m not a tire expert, and I’m not all that unique in knowing how to search things on the internet, and being able to find almost an exact substitute tire within minutes isn’t that remarkable. So why are so many tire shops, staffed with professional tire people saying the Michelin tire size has no substitutes?

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You can see from the above chart that all the specs are fairly close. The width is 8.5% larger, but that’s only 0.79″ so this substitute size would work for the rear dualies where width is an issue as well. All the other specs are within 2% except the side wall height is -5.1% shorter…a good thing in my mind. Pretty darn close overall.

Anyway, after finding that that tire size is fairly common, at least for trucks, I searched around the internet trying to find a tire brand that I’m familiar with that makes that size. Enter the size in Google, search the several truck tire sellers shown, but also, up pops Amazon! Cool! I have a prime account so shipping might be free! Other online tire retailers I’d looked at it was $80-$100 per tire.

Amazon has two or three brands in that size, including Toyo, but I chose RoadLux. I liked the looks of the tread, the load rating and speed specs, the history of the company and it’s modern European and Japanese machinery, their technical adviser Dunlop, and most of all, the under $200 price each. And it is a Prime listed product so shipping would be 5 days, and free. Two tires for less then the price of a single Michelin. Hah! They are Chinese, but even Michelin has a plant there. I would have gone with Double Coin with which I have expirience but these RoadLux were available right now, and I’d have to wait for the Coins. Plus they were less expensive. I know some of you are opposed to buying anything Chinese, for various reasons, and I tend to agree except I remember when people were diametrically opposed to buying Japanese products. Also, I have a duty to myself. If I hadn’t wasted money when I withdrew from my retirement account to buy this RV, because I didn’t realize I only had 60 days to replace it, not until April 15th like I thought, I wouldn’t have to pay as much tax on it. Yeah, they tax you for withdrawing your own money from your retirement account. So buying the pair of RoadLux for $1,000 less then if I’d bought Michelin (even some of theirs are made in China) is a way to save money to pay my taxes.

Ordered two of those and they arrived by UPS in 5 days. Kept them locked up to the picnic table here at the RV park a few days, then loaded them up in the bedroom and searched for a tire shop that would mount them for me. Found one at Love’s. Love’s Tire Care Center here in Troutdale, Oregon (outside Portland). They didn’t mind installing something I bought online, and that they didn’t sell, plus they quoted $40 per tire. I’d heard $50, so I was happy with the quote. They carry brass extensions for the Schrader valves at $7 each so got my old ones replaced while the tires were off (they are maintenance items). With balancing, removal and mounting, parts and supplies, it all came to $108. So for a total of $508, I now have two brand new steer tires on my rig. I kept the removed tire that was only 6 years old, I’ll sell that on Craigslist or keep it as a spare. If I sell it, that will save even more!

Here’s some pictures I took during the replacement process. They let me wander around the shop while they worked. I helped by lifting the RV with my jack system, and by spotting the two nuts that hold the chrome hub caps on. The techs inform me that the rear tires are all ’09 and look good, the brakes appear to have been serviced in ’09 and the pads have plenty of wear left on them, the lug nuts require 450 ft-lbs and they have a torque wrench (some shops don’t), they have and use a spin balance machine at no extra charge, and that everything looks good under there. Needs some rust abatement though.

My two new RoadLux tires.

Removing two chrome lug nut caps with the appropriate tool, reveals two large nuts with the only job of holding on the chrome hub caps. All the other apparent lug nut caps shown below are just for show and are attached to the hub cap. The other chrome piece is a wheel cover. All but two of the holes in that are oversize and fit over the lug nuts. The two nuts holding the chrome pieces are 1 & 5/8″ flat to flat as I recall. And are torqued to 70 ft-lbs.

After the hub cap and wheel cover are removed, the lug nuts are removed by torquing to 450 ft-lbs so a large shop air impact tool is required for removal. I believe the lug nuts are 1 & 1/2″. In any event, the shop needed to use two different socket sizes, one size for the hub cap nuts and one size for the lug nuts on the wheel. Here’s the shop. They have two bays, and the building is in the parking lot on the truck side of the Love’s station. The consumer side has separate diesel pumps for RVs. Along with propane fill, dump station, and water source. The air pump over there only goes to 70 PSI though. Not sure Love’s changed that to handle modern RV tires that require over 100 PSI when they bought the station from Flying J. So if you need air, best to just come here to this shop if they are not too busy. The extra long studs are really for looks…allows the addition of those chrome hub caps. Part of the air brake system. This and the following pictures are so I have an easy reference to this stuff underneath for future work if necessary. The pictures make it look worse then it actually is under there.

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The air bag. Note how far it’s extended and stressed when I raised the rig up to remove the tires. Probably not a good idea now that I think about it. Should have made the shop use their own jack. I’ll check on that.

[Edit: I found out later what a bad idea using my jacks to lift the front as high as is needed to R&R tires could have been to my air bags. You can see in a following picture how they had been hyper extended. This could damage or even ruin them. I was lucky as 5 years later they are still holding up well. I’m pretty sure that the loud noises I heard coming from under the front of the rig 3 times while driving away from the shop were the air bags expanding back into proper bellows type position. I’d extended them out of shape when lifting the rig.]

Hammering the lug nuts back on. This was followed by using a really large torque wrench set for 450 ft-lbs. The sidewall showed the tires max air pressure at 120 PSI, I had them set at 110 PSI. After that was done, they had me drop the RV a couple inches so they could use the torque wrench and torque the lug nuts. After that was done, on both sides, installed the hub caps and wheel covers, dropped the rig all the way, and I’m ready to go. The HWH jack system works great for small adjustments in lifting and dropping.Looking at these drums, I’m pretty sure these use brake shoes, not pads. Damn, I like the power and simplicity of disk brakes. Didn’t know this rig has all drums. My smaller and lighter ’94 Bounder had 2 drum and two disk setup. Too much to go wrong with this design, perhaps? Oh, wait they’re air brakes, and I know nothing about them. More research needed. On the plus side, the rig has a Jake Exhaust Brake so I won’t be needing to change the brake shoes all that often anyway.

[Edit, Apr. ’21: I’ve had the opportunity to inspect the brake shoes a few times since I bought this RV in ’16 and they aren’t wearing hardly at all because I keep the exhaust brake on nearly all the time I’m driving. In town heavy traffic I might turn it off but usually it’s on. I do need to do some heavy braking occasionally to keep the pads from getting all crusty…as recommended by big truck drivers, so I do that on a downhill every so often by applying the brake hard. When using exhaust brakes, I’ve read that brake pads should give around 300,000 miles.] Takes some muscle working on these tires. The tire alone is 91 lbs. Then add the 35 lbs for the steel rim and you’re looking at 126 lbs.  This multipurpose tire tool is pretty slick. Helps the tire guy do with one tool what are typically two jobs, slipping the tire bead off the rim, and the tire off the wheel. With the leverage afforded by that long handle, it didn’t look like all that hard of an operation.

This is Brad the tire tech and big rig mechanic. He uses the above tool, the other tech uses two steel bars with special ends.

So after they had everything done, I loaded the six year old tire in the rig and headed off to home. Sure glad I didn’t have to do that work. My back couldn’t handle much of it these days.

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And here are the Jam Nuts used to keep the wheel covers in place.

And that was the end of it. So I had 2 new tires, knew the date of manufacture of the other 4, and they look good enough that I’ll keep using them for another year, maybe two.

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Update: Dec. 2019 – Installing Front shocks

After the improvement installing front shocks did to stability when going up/down a road transition, I was eager to get the rear shocks installed. That’s much more of a job as it’s a tight squeeze under there and at the time my knees were bothering me a lot so I decided to have them installed at the tire shop when I had a new set of tires mounted. They’s already have the tires off, and someone else could work on the shocks while the tire was off. Very efficient I thought. So I hired American Custom Tire shop in Quartzsite, AZ and after they did an oil/filter change for me, I asked them to keep working and replace the front shocks. I already had the Bilstein shocks on hand having bought them back in August.

What the tire shop did was jack up the front of the RV, and had me turn the wheel all the way. Then they could get in the wheel well and get their big sockets and try to get the nuts off. Eventually, they needed to cut them off with a power metal saw though as that was much easier and took less time then trying to get the rusty bolts off. They did need to remove the passenger side wheel to get more room to work, but at a tire shop, that’s not a problem. If a DIY’er wanted to do it, they’d need an impact socket for the lug nuts, a 1/2″ or 3/4″ breaker bar, and a 4′ extension for leverage as the lug nuts are in the 450 ft-lbs to 500 ft-lbs range. I have a power metal saw I was going to use to cut the bolts myself but discovered I’d have to remove the tire so let the shop handle installing the shocks instead. Cost for installation plus the new bolts and nuts required was $85. Yeah, well worth it not having to do it myself. Parts required for 2X: Nuts, Bolts and Washers, size 1/2″ X 6: $16. Total was $103. Bilstein shocks P/N Front: BSN 33025452

The improvement was noticed as soon as I drove off the tire shops tarmac onto the roadway. I could feel that there was less sway as I transitioned down the cement driveway onto the roadway. I believe this Freightliner chassis came with Bilstein’s…that’s what was on it when I bought it, and the condition of the nuts and bolts holding the shocks sort of verified that they are original. They seemed to last around 70 K miles. Not to bad. They do get a workout.

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Update: Aug. 2019 – Installing Rear shocks

Like the tires, I stagger installing things like shocks. Spreading out maintenance costs suits my nature. You can see how the shocks are mounted on the front of the chassis in the pictures above, and when I felt the time was right and I could tell I needed shocks, I checked around the internet for the best deal and found that Amazon would work best.  Cost for the shocks was $385 for fronts & rears, with free shipping. Amazon had them in stock and for months before when I’d check, no one had stock of my shock p/n in the Bilstein line. So when I found them in stock, snatched them up. Supply didn’t have anything to do with Covid-19 as that didn’t happen until 2020. Dunno what Bilstein was up to.

So when it was time to change the rear duals (see below), I had them do the shocks at the same time, since they would have the wheels off anyway. More efficient. The passenger side shock took the longest to remove and replace but the drivers side was pretty easy. They did it out in their parking lot in front of the shop so I got to watch close up.

You can see pictures below. P/N is Rear: BSN 24186452

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New Dual Rear Tires – Aug. 2019

Here in Oregon, there’s no sales tax so after three years had passed and the rear dual tires passed that magic 10 year old mark (as recommended by experts as the time to replace), it was time to order new tires. Not a difficult decision to make as the old ’09 Michelin tires had thousands of side wall cracks…I could have limped along with them probably for as much as another 5 years as some do even with those cracks, but I would rather not be worried about it every trip. I mean who wants to be stuck on the side of the road waiting for a tire truck after a blowout. I do carry a spare casing in the trunk of my car so I’m ready but it was time for replacement, before I needed them.

I found a terrific deal (compared to the other sites and local dealers prices) at Tires-easy.com with free shipping, and no tax because they’d be shipped to Oregon. I couldn’t get the date code of the tires from them since they are just the retailer, but went ahead and ordered them anyway. Cost was $1,040 for all four, including shipping. And with the right to return free of charge though I had to drag that out of the salesperson. Had them shipped direct to a nearby tire shop who will mount them for me for $45 each. And went over and inspected them when they arrived and they are all date coded the 48-49th weeks of ’18. So they are all pretty close to the same age, and all of them are around 8-9 months old. I’m ok with that. BTW, I ordered the same Roadlux R216 255/70R22.5 tire brand and type I have on the fronts. I like how they are wearing. The fronts are three years old and I can’t see any wear yet.

While I was getting tire things, I really wanted those long tire valve in-the-wheel extensions but over the last two years as I searched for them occasionally, I was really beginning to wonder why they are so rare? I mean there are countless millions of RVs on the road and those solid extensions are really excellent additions to the wheels. They don’t develop leaks anywhere near the rate the braided rubber ones do, or the plain screw on extensions do, and make adding air much easier. Anyway, here in Milton-Freewater, Oregon I checked with a couple tire shops about those in-the-wheel extensions and no one had any BUT, talking to Terry at Terry’s OK Tire Store  (541) 938-5692) he knew what I was talking about unlike most other shops I’ve asked about them over the last 2 years. He’s an older guy so has lots of experience, looked it up in the catalog, found 2 of the long ones and called his supplier who said he had those and the 180 degree ones, then delivered the set a couple days later. And guess what, unlike the exact same set I’d bought from Les Schwab a few years ago for $70 freakin’ dollars, these cost me $21. Only difference in the two sets is that the Les Schwab set had two rubber inserts that go in the hand hole in the wheel cover to hold the long shaft to keep it from wobbling while the wheel is spinning at 65 MPH.

The distributor guy was there when I went to pick them up, and he tells me that the 180 degree ones are a brand new part his manufacturer JUST started producing, though they’ve made the longs ones for a long time. I’d been able to get those before, though a different brand, and they didn’t look as cool as these. Didn’t have the rubber wheel cover (equivalent to a hub cap) hole inserts though, but he’s going to try to find them for me.

When they were installed at the tire shop, and the tires pumped up to 120 PSI, one of the two 180 degree types blew out of the hole, the other leaked. They had to find bigger rubber seals for them. So if you get these, make sure you get bigger rubbers seals. Most truck tire shops will have them. The long extensions had appropriate rubber seals and were fine, but even though 4.5″ long they still ended up too short so I had to buy 5″ metal screw on extensions too. These are the common type that just screw onto the top of a tire valve. Found it back at the Les Schwab shop in Milton-Freewater…and that shop had clip in holders for them so they won’t whip around while driving. Spring metal type, chrome, clip into the hand hole of the wheel.

So here’s a few shots of the work done having the tires put on…it was a chore for several reasons, the first because the idiot at the Winnebago Factory Service way over tightened the hub cap jam nuts. At least 125 ft-lbs. Took the Winnebago shop over a week to send me the specs on the torque required for them after I’d asked at least 5 times for it back in May of ’18 when they were doing work for me. The shop  tech just told me he wrenched them tight and I asked, “So 40 odd ft-lbs then?” because by then I had a good idea what it should be and he goes, “Yeah, just tight plus 1/4 turn”. Which would be reasonable, but was a lie. He’d obviously used an impact tool based on the damage he did to my hub cap and how tight they were when we tried to get them off.

Anyway, took an hour to get the hub caps off because of his stupidity. The over tightening distorted the thin metal of the hub cap so causing it catch in the treads of the lug bolt. This caused us to have to carefully pry it off trying not to damage it. Wasn’t easy. I helped the shop by coming up with a piece of scrap metal they formed into an impromptu tool that could be wedged under the hub cap lip which allowed us to pry off the cover eventually. In any event, the hub caps took much longer than normal to peel off thanks to Winnebago’s ‘Service’.

The next problem could have been really bad if I’d gotten a few miles down the road, as the shop techs didn’t think about how thin and small the rubber gasket was that came with the 180 degree valve extension shown in the above picture. They just put it in the wheel and filled the tire with 120 PSI air. Installed it on the RV. Moved to the other side and set it up the same way but before the tire was installed, the valve blew right out of the wheel. The tech figured out what went wrong, got a bigger thicker rubber gasket for it, installed the tires, then had to go back to the other side, remove and rework that tire too. It was slow leaking when he pulled it off. Disaster waiting to happen right there. Glad he caught the mistake before I got down the road and two tires went flat.

The shop is just 100 yards from the Washington border on the Oregon side. Land of no sales tax. The highway is US-12. I found them to be very competent and willing to work with me on things.

I also had them remove and replace the old shocks in the rear since they had easy access when the tires were off. Turned out to be a bit of a chore because the nuts and bolts were hard to get to and had some rust.

They used a big floor jack that just barely fit under the axle to lift, and for safety, they also used a large bottle jack. In regards to the RV parts here, that round thing on the right kind of hidden is part of the air brake assembly, the round rubber looking thing on the left is the air bag used for cushioning. I kind of knew from the side to side rocking I got from driving slowly over a curb or speed bump that the shocks were bad so I pre-purchased them ready to be installed without having to wait for parts to be delivered. The RV would whipsaw bad enough to dump half the freezer onto the floor which is why I suspected the shocks were bad. I still have the front shocks to replace but hope to do that soon.

The tires in this shot are the old Michelin’s. They still have plenty (some?) tread left and I asked the shop if they could resell those and it was a definite no because they’re too old. Not to mention all the side wall cracks. While I was inspecting them, I did notice some damage to the rubber on one of them…a big chunk was missing. Looked like I ran over something metal while turning or the PO did.

So with all that stuff happening, it took from 10:30 am, until 3:45 pm to get the work done. All four tires are now installed and looking good. The owner wasn’t in so the techs were able to give me a pretty big discount on labor since I actively helped where I could without interfering. Let them use several of my tools too. Ended up paying $265 labor to have new 4 tires installed, difficult damaged hub caps removed, the removed tire carcasses disposed, 2 new shocks installed, and valve extensions installed. Considering all the problems and all the time it took to do the work, I’m satisfied. All in all, the entire job, including the valve extensions, the extra labor costs because of the damaged hub caps, the shocks, the labor, the balance beads, came to $1698. About half what it would cost most RV’ers.

Update: Sept. ’19, after several hundred driving miles

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I don’t have a calibrated butt so I don’t seem to be able to tell much difference in ride when new tires are installed or new shocks for that matter and the new tires and new rear shocks seemed to make no difference in ride as compared to before I changed.

As far as the new tires go, I can’t tell any difference in ride. I often read about other RV’ers being all enthused when they get new tires saying how much better the ride is. I sometimes think that’s just wishful thinking after all the money they spent because I’ve never noticed a difference, no matter which car or RV I’ve own over my entire driving life. A different sound yeah, but never the ride. Tires have air in them and cushion the ride whether they are in bad shape or not.

Well, whatever, the new tires seem to work, they go round and round, and are holding air so that’s good. The shocks did seem to make a bit of an improvement. I did notice that the RV didn’t rock quite as much when I went over a speed bump here at this RV park I’ve driven over before and I’m hoping when I get the fronts installed soon that will make it even better.

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Update: Apr. 2018

I had an appointment at the Winnebago Factory Service Center in Forest City, Iowa for some work and as part of the trip driving there, I stopped in South Dakota and established residency. Because that’s what all the cool RV kids are doing. While at the RV park there in Sioux Falls, I noticed that one of my Jam nuts had disappeared! WTH? Have no idea how, when, or where that could have happened, but it happened. It’s not good to only have one because replacing that chrome wheel cover can be very expensive. So I looked at Google for a truck parts store, and I cannot believe it but there was one almost directly across the street from where I was staying! What luck.

So I carried a sample of my lug nut chrome covers over there trying to find a replacement jam nut (it’s like a lug nut but half the thickness and it only holds the chrome wheel cover on, not the wheel). And they had them. But…they didn’t have that particular size of chrome nut cap. The had taller, plastic nut caps though. So I bought 4 of those, and replaced the jam nut caps on the duals with those. They’re noticeable so I can tell a tire guy the tall covers are over the jam nuts and don’t have to watch the guy.

So when I got to Forest River, I still hadn’t installed the jam nuts and asked the tech to do it for me. Which he did. And then I asked how tight he’d cinched them down. He says tight. Doh! Guy didn’t know the ft-lbs required. Took that factory service a week to finally dig out the information that the jam nuts are suppose to get NO MORE than 40 ft-lbs. Wow, I was less than impressed.