For a lot of people, Spring means a lot of different things. For me, it signals the fact that camping season is right around the corner. That means taking the short trip to my parents to dismantle, inspect, and repack the wheel bearings before brining our trailer home from storage.
I wrote a post a while ago about doing the bearings, so I won't bore you with that again. Many people simply use the quick grease zerk fittings on their axels, but I prefer to give the bearings a good physical inspection once a year.
It is a messy job, but I can usually have all four wheels done in a couple of hours and it gives me the chance to visit with my dad.
Over the past year, I noticed that the tires on my trailer were wearing a bit funny. I rotated them to see if it was on specific spot or tire and before I knew it, I had two tires with this abnormal wear pattern on the outside edge.
Since these are the tires that originally came on the trailer (five years ago) and those are known to be pretty low quality, I decided to get some new ones.
I called my regular place and they first quoted me a set of Radar tires for $300 cash. I had never heard of that brand, so I started doing a little research and I discovered that they were made in China. No offense to the Chinese, but I haven't heard great things about their tires.
Part of the reason I repack my bearings every year is so that I am not that guy sitting on the side of the expressway with a blow tire on their trailer. If you live in the US, you have likely seen what I am talking about many times.
Anyway, I figured why risk it, so I told the guy that I was okay paying a bit more for a better quality tire. Apparently Goodyear are the only trailer tires that are made in the US, so I decided to go with those for $600 cash.
Two days before my appointment, I got a call that they were not able to get the Goodyear tires. I quickly found another dealer who had some in stock for just a little more money and setup an appointment with them.
Our driveway is sloped quite a bit towards the road. I was really worried about the trailer screeching forward with all of the tires gone, so Saturday morning I pulled the spare off so I could put it on one of the hubs and chock it in place. I then went about removing the other wheels and threw them in the bed of my truck.
Luckily I have air tools. That made everything much easier!
My appointment at Discount Tire in the next town over was for 9:30. I got there at 9:10 and since they weren't very busy, they actually had my tires done before my appointment was supposed to start. I pulled back into my driveway right around 9:35.
Looking at the picture above, it does kind of look like my axel might be bent a little. I don't feel like messing with that right now, so I just put the new wheels on and I will keep an eye on them. It actually wouldn't be a bad thing to have to replace them every five years and that might be a lot less expensive and hassle free than messing with replacing the axel.
So here they are, my brand new Goodyear Endurance Load Range D tires on my travel trailer. All ready to go for a summer of camping. I got them back on fairly quickly thanks to my air impact wrench and then I used my torque wrench to tighten the lug nuts down to 100 foot pound of torque.
They sure are pretty!
Meanwhile, during the whole tire job, I got a call from my wife. She was in a parking lot to watch our nieces soccer game and someone ran into her...
Looks like I know what my next project is going to be!
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