Tire Question: Replace Michelin's with Bridgestones?

[dhgraves]

I have a tire question for you experienced RV’s. I recently purchased a 40’ American Eagle on a Spartan chassis. The tires are right at ten years old and the service center said there is some small cracking and they need to be replaced. The tires I currently have are Michelin 275/80 R22.5 XZA2 but they are so expensive I am considering Bridgestone 295/75 22.5 as replacements (I run Bridgestone’s on our fire engines and they provide very good handling and service). My concern is the ride. The coach rides real smooth with the Michelins and I don’t want to make a big mistake in ride and road noise. Any help?

[wolfe10]

dhgraves,

Welcome to the FMCA Forum.

I will address part of your question-- cost. Have you priced the Michelins through the FMCA Michelin Fleet Account?

As to whether the other size will work, go to each tire manufacturer's website and compare all tire dimensions and carrying capacities.

And, the service center is correct-- irrespective of how much tread is left, EITHER cracks OR 10 years old means REPLACE.

[hermanmullins]

dhgraves,

Going to a larger tire will throw off your speedometer. On most 22.5 tires you will have a small amount of road noise when they are first installed, but that will diminish fairly quickly.

Some times a 7 to 10 year old tire may look great but take a close look in between the treads. It my frighten you to see the amount of cracking.

Brett made a statement in another post, Are your tires where you want to go with the lowest bidder? I just paraphrased his comment?

Herman

[desertdeals69]

Michelins will give you a smoother ride because of the sidewall. I made the mistake of trying Toyos and the ride was harsher and I have returned back to Michelins.

[jc21014]

You might look at Hankooks. We have run them on our cars and MH for some time and have been pleased. The price is nice to.

[jg053047]

My 2 cents worth of advice to you would be to just get those 10 year old tires off ASAP. We lost a family of members do to a tire failure that resulted in fire from the right frt wheel area which was caused by the fuel fill pipe behind the wheel well ruptured. They got trapped in rear bed area unable to escape through the exit window.

Regardless of what brand you decide also go to Mac the fire guys utube for some good advice.

I personally chose Michelin XZA3+ Load range H for both comfort and safety on our American Eagle!

Good luck and also welcome to FMCA

[BillO]

I would definitely second the suggestion of Wolfe10. I too looked at Bridgestone when I was shopping in Texas. For the same level of tire I did better with Michelins through the FMCA program. It should be the same for you unless you're also getting a preferential price due to the fire engine connection. I've no experience with Bridgestones to compare ride quality, but can say the Michelins were a dramatic improvement over the Dayton bus tires they replaced.

I would confirm tire sizes between the different brands, but I also wouldn't be surprised to find that 275/80 and 295/75 are identical. There is something weird in that particular size (and some others, I suspect) that gets labelled differently depending on some US vs European convention.

I also found that there were some decided inconsistencies between tire pressure versus load on different tire ratings in that size. Some companies maintain the same load/pressure curve for both G and H rated tires' while other companies (including Michelin) have separate curves with lower required pressure for the same load on their H rated tires. I started a thread on that inconsistency which you could find in the history of this section, although the results were inconclusive.

[desertdeals69]

My 2 cents worth of advice to you would be to just get those 10 year old tires off ASAP. We lost a family of members do to a tire failure that resulted in fire from the right frt wheel area which was caused by the fuel fill pipe behind the wheel well ruptured. They got trapped in rear bed area unable to escape through the exit window.

Regardless of what brand you decide also go to Mac the fire guys utube for some good advice.

I personally chose Michelin XZA3+ Load range H for both comfort and safety on our American Eagle!

Good luck and also welcome to FMCA

That sounds like the accident north of Havasu last year. A tragic situation.

[dhgraves]

Thanks for your help. I purchased the Michelin’s through the FMCA program and saved $892.37 off the best price I could find anywhere else.

[mcpowhn]

Ok guys......... you've convinced me. Mine are 10 yrs old with lots of tread and only 32K miles but lots of cracked sidewalls. Who has replaced the Michelin XRV 235/80R 22.5 lately with FMCA's Michelin program and what was the out the door price?

Thanks

The Master Chief

[zorro2kita]

I replaced all 6 on my 2003 Pace Arrow last June - same size as yours, including tire change over, balance, valve stems, "scrap" and tax in GA for $3,021. The tire price from Michelin is standard I believe - the tire dealer makes his profit on change over, balancing, etc.

Very happy with the pricing I received but dealers will vary the prices of their services to up the profit margin -

Hope this helps !

[sandyhepburn]

Ok guys......... you've convinced me. Mine are 10 yrs old with lots of tread and only 32K miles but lots of cracked sidewalls. Who has replaced the Michelin XRV 235/80R 22.5 lately with FMCA's Michelin program and what was the out the door price?

Thanks

The Master Chief

I just replaced my XRVs in 235/80R22.5 with XZEs in the same size - Total bill including mounting, balancing, disposal, and all the various taxes the feds and California add my bill was $3052.51. The cost of the tire itself was $413.58 - a savings of $89.97 off the retail price. I joined FMCA last week specifically for this discount!

[khuskeysr@yahoo.com]

I bought 4 Michelin XZE 255/80R 22.5 -- $572 was price before discount. I paid $470 per tire. Saved $102 per tire. Mounting and balancing plus valve stems & taxes not included. Total was $2417.40....$30 Mounting @ dismounting...$35 balancing -- per tire plus valve stems & taxes. This alone is well worth the membership to FMCA plus all the help from these forums. Very thankful to all the members that post on these forums

[J79Engine]

So 4 of my tires are original as far as I can tell on our 2005 SunVoyager and I was thinking they should be changed this year because they are at least 8 years old. I had the dealer change the front two because they had flat spots from the coach sitting in Michigan for 2 years before it was traded in Ohio.

The front tire are Michelins tires which I have also on my pickup truck and like the ride they give. I was figuring 2K for the four tires to be replaced. what is the rule of thumb on RV tires 5 years? and how do you know the tire dealer is not supplying you with tires that have been on his rack for 4 years or does the Michelin program guarantee the tires were manufactured in 2013?

What does the load rating like H mean, as stated above?

Thanks;

USAF, Ret but still working in Aviation

[tireman9]

J49

1. Load Range is a letter code D, E F, G etc with higher letters meaning a higher inflation stated for the max for that given tire. It really replaced "Ply Rating" as the actual number of plies on modern Truck Bus Radials,(TBR) as uses on Class-A RVs is 1 body ply of steel plus 3 or 4 plies of steel in the tread. So saying I have a 12 ply rating (1 actual ply) or a 14 ply rating (1 actual ply) was determined to be misleading. You can read the actual material in your tires if you simply read the sidewall. You will see something like this except it will probably be Steel not Polyester, + Nylon

OK tire date. All tires have a DOT serial code. Most have a partial code on one side and the full code on the other side. It starts with DOT then letters and numbers like this.

The last 4 digits will be numbers. In this example the tire was made the 51st week of 2007. If you want a 2012 tire then you want to see something like 4212 which would be the 42nd week of 2012 or 0313 3rd week of 2013. Read more about tire serial date and age HERE.

I don't think that because your pick-up tires ride nice you can always assume your 22.5" TBR tires will be the same. This would be like assuming that because a Chevy Corvette is great handling then a Chevy Vega would also be great handling.

Be sure your new tires have a Load Range equal or greater than the load range shown on your RV Placard or Certification label. Get your RV weighed when fully loaded (food, fuel water, bowling ball collection, co driver's shoes etc). Confirm you are not overloading your tires. using a good gauge I would run + 5 to +10 psi over the minimum needed for the actual load. Inflate all tires on an axle with the same inflation. Set the inflation for the load on the heaviest tire. Get and pay attention to a TPMS and have a safe Summer.