Camper Tire Maintenance

Tires are the most vulnerable component on an RV, and yet they're the most neglected. Most people don't check their tires. After all, we kind of got conditioned with our trucks and our cars and SUVs that we have tire monitors on it, so it tells us when they go low. But there's a lot of problems with tires out in the market these days because we're not checking the pressure and we're not checking the weight in 'em. So we have a typical tire, especially on a pop up like this one here, because you've got a small tire, it's an ST-rated tire, kind of a thinner sidewall, you can get a lot of heat in it.

So one of the things you always need to carry with you is a good quality tester. This is one I got from a truck center. They're calibrated, so I know they're correct. And every time I go out on the road, I'm gonna check these tires as I go around. The other thing I'm gonna do is, anytime I stop for fuel, I am gonna check the temperature of the tire, the bearings, the brakes in that.

So it's very important that I know what's happening with that, so I avoid danger. Now, the other thing I see a lot of times, is people very seldom will check the spare. On this pop up here, the spares are on the backside, it's got a cover on it. And so the chances are, we probably haven't looked at that spare for proper inflation, and they could lose two to three pounds a week, just normally. So that's something that you periodically have to do, and I would say make that part of your walk-around test.

These pop ups don't have tire pressure monitors, unless you put 'em on. So very seldom have I ever seen that. Now, another thing you wanna do is check your owner's manual. So what happens if I do have a sudden loss of air or a tire blowout, and I need to change this tire? Lippert is the chassis manufacturer for this pop up trailer here, and they've got a couple different references, the first one on page 86.

And whoever manufactures it will have some type of reference on how to jack this up. One of the things that you don't realize is, you don't have a jack for this. You can't use that stabilizer or leveling jack to bring 'em up, and even if you have hydraulic ones, they do not recommend using those. So manufacturers don't put a jack in here. You'll need to get some type of a system that can raise this, and it's about a 3,200 pound unit.

So we're not raising the full weight of that, we might not have to get that big of a jack, but just some kind of a floor-type jack that's easy to get into a compartment. And you don't have a lot of room in here to put stuff, so you might wanna put it in your truck bed or your SUV, whatever you're towing with. But the thing that they're saying here is, do not jack this unit up at the axle. A lot of people like to slide those floor jacks underneath and hit the brace of that axle to get that tire off the ground, 'cause they don't have to... They have to jack a lot at the frame.

You do not wanna do that 'cause you can bend that axle, those brackets. These are pretty lightweight axles that are on these units. So make sure you find the frame that is underneath and get on the frame itself. Put a board underneath, so you're not sinking in. Once you take the wheel off, you get it changed, then there's also a recommendation in here about putting it back on, and torque settings.

So you use the star, and this one happens to have the diagram on the backside here. So you'd use the star method here, that you would use to torque this down with. And they have settings in here. So you torque 'em down first at 20 to 25 pounds. Then you go back and do the 30 to 60 pounds, and then you do the 90 to 120.

And I typically, on a unit like this, I typically stay about around 110. That seems to be. And the reason that you're torquing these is you're getting them tight, evenly, through the whole thing. If I have one that's tighter than the other one, I could warp that hub that's behind here and then I would have some axle problems issue and eventually a breakdown. So the big thing with these is just make sure you got a good jack, you check the tires every time you go out on the road, and cover those tires.

If they're gonna be exposed to sun out here, put a tire cover over so you don't get the weather checking. And make sure you check that spare.