As I was finishing up cleaning my pup before the first trip out this year, a 300+ mile trip at that, I went to put on some tire dressing to make them black again. I was shocked to find the amount of dry rot that 1 of my tires had developed over the winter that was not there last year! Luckily my spare is brand new so I switched them out, but I don't want to think of what could have happened flying down the turnpike!
That dry rot will sneak itself in there!
One springtime morning, pulled the Starcraft down to Charleston for it's annual wheel bearing service at a favorite place I have there. After dropping the pup off, went about on visiting some places with people to see and upon my return the job was done and my spare tire had been mounted. Seems that over the winter a fairly new tire had separation problems, right in the center of tread. I had drove over 100 miles and why that tire did not blow is beyond me! So that's good advice to give those tires a good check over in the springtime. In fact, after that incident, I began to do so before heading out on every trip.
Just yesterday, I was cleaning the spare and just bumped the valve stem with the rag I was using. The valve stem cracked and I lost all the air in the tire. The tire is in great shape (no dry rot or cracks) and is always covered. It just goes to show you that I need to check the tires a little more often.
That brings up another good point ...
Besides having the correct air pressure in the camper tires, with the high psi pressures usually with trailer tires, always make sure you have high pressure valve stems. Often tire shops will install just regular valve stems which generally speaking good for 35 - 40 psi. However, with the ST tires H/D valve stems are required as they could fail just driving down the road. There have been instances where the tire manufacturer gets the blame for a lousy tire blowing out when it was the improper valve stem.
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