Inspecting RV Tires Prior to Trip Departure

Before you ever hit the road with your RV, whether it's a travel trailer a fifth wheel or a motorhome, make tire inspection part of your pre-trip checklist. Every single time you go out you wanna check the pressure, you wanna inspect the tire. Make sure you get a quality pressure gauge that's been certified that goes up to the PSI that you would need. Know what your proper inflation is and like I say, come out and inspect the tire. First thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look at the sidewall of the tire.

I wanna look for any type of weather checking, any type of gouges. If I start to see this get more than about a 16th of an inch and Michelin does have a gauge that you can download from our site on. But I wanna look at that weather checking. What happens with the tire is when it sits out exposed to the sun, it's gonna start to dry up. And one of the things you never ever wanna use a tire shine on the side you wanna use something that has a UV protection built into it, like the Protect All product here.

If I start to see anything over a 16th of an inch on the weather checking, I'm gonna replace the tires. I'm just asking for trouble, I'm asking for a blowout and we see this a lot out on the industry because people just let their tires sit. I'm also gonna check the tread. So the old method is to take the traditional penny put the head upside down. If he can see Lincoln's head but towards the top of it's time to change it.

Now with a unit like this is a diesel pusher. These tires are pretty critical on a larger unit. I would get a depth gauge and go specifically with the depth gauge and go by either Dunlop or Michelin or Goodyear's recommendation on tire tread. The other thing I'm gonna look at is the tread itself. I'm gonna run my hands back and forth on this here.

You wanna be kind of careful as when you're looking at steel belted, radials, I would put a glove on if I have any steel belts sticking out of here I'm gonna poke my hand and cut it. But what I'm looking for is even tread wear, If I feel it kind of rough going this way and smooth going this way, especially on my steering wheels, the front wheels, I'm gonna have an alignment issue same thing with trailers. A lot of times you can get a trailer tire or an axle that starts to bend a little bit. And, it's not an alignment issue. It's more the actual bending.

Maybe it's a weight issue that it's starting to tow out a little bit and I will get some tread wear on this side and not on the other side. And those are issues that you're gonna have to take it into a dealer and have them literally do an alignment. Laser alignment of that bent axle might even need a new axle. I'm gonna look at my extenders. If I have valve extensions on the backside here for the duals on the inside and this one doesn't happen to, have a valve extension with it but I wanna make sure that those are nice and tight, especially older units.

'Cause those start to move around a little bit and I could cut that valve extension and I could get a flat tire on the inside as well. And then I don't know about it going down the road. That's why I think it's important to put tire monitors on this. They've got Tire Pressure Monitors, TPS, TPMs and that way I can see it inside when I'm going down the road. And don't forget if you gotta a large unit with duals inside, you wanna check that inside dual as well.

Again, the weather checking on the side, you're not gonna have it as much, but they still could deteriorate. And the last thing I'm gonna inspect on this is I wanna know the age of the tire and right on the DOD stamp we're gonna have the age of the tire. It's gonna tell us the last four digits on that stamp are gonna be the month and the year of the tire. Anything over 10 years old, I'm gonna replace. But again, every time you hit the road, get out here just check the visually, check the sidewall, the tread, the pressure, make that part of your trip, a pre-trip checklist and you'll reduce tire failures and problems going down the road.