More success with 15-inch Goodyear Marathon tires

[Bill]

Another update for the tire upgrade experiment that we started a while ago. My wife and I just completed our yearly dash from Scottsdale, AZ to Wells, ME. About 2900 miles in 6 days, all but about 200 miles of it of it on Interstate highways, cruising for hours at 65-70 mph. Once again the 15-inch Goodyear Marathons on our 2720SL performed flawlessly. I do a back-of-the-hand check of tire temperature at every stop, and these tires at 60 psi were stone-cold - cooler than the 18-inch tires on my Explorer, which run slightly warm at 40 psi under those conditions.

Those who have been following the saga will recall that I had tremendous trouble over several years with the OEM 14-inch Marathons. Other board members had problems that seemed to echo my own. As events developed, there is no way to be sure if the trouble was the tires themselves or faulty Chinese valve stems. Bottom line, though, is that the 14-inchers were running pretty close to their rated load, and they always ran warm.

This was, I think, our 4th cross-country dash on the new tires. I have been entirely satisfied with the move to 15-inch Marathons on 15-inch rims. Thanks, Bobby, for making this possible.

Bill