Power King Towmax tires

[sgellis13]

These are the standard equipment and came with my new Wildcat 383 fifth wheel. I have to replace one because it picked up a screw on the dealer's lot and the patch isn't holding well. We've put well over 3000 miles on them in the last six months with no trouble, and have another 1500 miles to go on our current journey. So I'm wondering if we're living on borrowed time or and if it's safe to buy the same tire to replace the leaking one. I've read a few stories about these tires failing but it seems those are very much the exception rather than the rule. My other question is, if the stock tire is LR E, would it be okay to go up to the next LR for a little safety net?

[Kaadk]

I think the thing you have to ask yourself is, can you afford to swap out all the tires right now? If no, then I wouldn't recommend changing your LR yet. I can't predict what putting a stiffer tire on one side with a lower LR tire on the other side would actually do, but my rudimentary high school physics tells me it'd be a bad idea. You can potentially change to a better brand, but you would still want the tires to ride uniformly.

[JohnD10]

Originally Posted by sgellis13

These are the standard equipment and came with my new Wildcat 383 fifth wheel. I have to replace one because it picked up a screw on the dealer's lot and the patch isn't holding well. We've put well over 3000 miles on them in the last six months with no trouble, and have another 1500 miles to go on our current journey. So I'm wondering if I'm living on borrowed time or and if it's safe to buy the same tire to replace the leaking one. I've read a few stories about these tires failing but it seems those are very much the exception rather than the rule. My other question is, if the stock tire is LR E, would it be okay to go up to the next LR?

Don't buy anymore of these tires...also known as 'BlowMax' tires!

If you do buy just one tire, as long as you buy the same size and load rating of another brand you should be OK.

If you can, get a Goodyear Endurance (not a Marathon as that is the same krap tire you already have), Hercules (which is what I just replaced my tires with), Maxxis or Carlisle tires.

Although as of late, the Maxxis tires are getting hard to find locally without ordering them as when I bought my new set of tires back in March I tried to buy Maxxis 8008's and was told by several tire shops in Denver (Discount Tire, Tires Plus, Big 'O', Les Shwaub and a few others) that they are now 'internet tires' and are no longer stocked (I know, you'll get conflicting reports here, but that was what I ran into).

I had to buy a tire to replace one that was separating a few months before that and bumped that one to an 'E' range and even though that tire was one inch taller, I ran all of last summer with that tire and didn't have any uneven wear on that or the 'D' range tire on the other side of that axle (probably around 2500 miles).

As I mentioned above, I chose the Hercules SP2 tires as they came highly recommended from several RV'ers and OTA truck drivers that I know.

I've got around 5000 miles on them already and so far they still look like new!

Took this shot a couple of weeks ago at the storage yard: