tires

i'm about to replace 15" marathons on our 3124kb....
does anyone know of any new research or does anyone have any councel and/or advise on truck vs. st ,goodyear vs, anyone else etc...
blowouts on marathons or any other tire makes my family very concerned'!!!!
i'm sure most campers are well aware and probable quite diligent about loads and maintaining tire pressure....
there must be someone in our network who done some investigation etc...

thanks bill s

[fcatwo]

I assume you are aware of http://www.epinions.com. Goodyear and Carlisle are prominent there. Stuff happens to all of them.

I scanned the reviews on epinion and do not see any indication of how old the tires were. The mileage and load capacity and pressure are often mentioned but how long have they been on the trailer? 2000 mi. of towing can easily mean the trailer sat unused for a good deal of time. As I mentioned in my "How old are those Tires?" post, my first tires (not Marathons) disintegrated as described in the reviews in 2 years of use. The trailer was brand new but the tires could have sat around in a warehouse or on my trailer for who knows how long. While those folks may not have known how to find the mfg date on the side, do they know that they have to replace tires regardless of use in 3 to 5 years? We don't have any idea.
Thats why I want to know from folks on this forum, if you know how old your tires were, even if it is just how long they were on your trailer, it might help the rest of us get a picture of why all the blow outs. Are we keeping them too long or are some just plain unsafe?
In my case, I think my first tires were old even though my trailer was new. (speculation since they are long gone) In the case of my TM, I bought it used (9 years old) and took it on faith and visual inspection that they were good since the seller said they were. Obviously not the way to do it.
So speak up folks. Do you have any idea how old your blown tires might have been before they failed?
Cheri
(I wonder if the problem with seeing past posts in the Tires section is keeping folks from responding to these questions)

[fcatwo]

Having never had the misfortune of blowing a tire in well over 100K ot trailer towing (two or three that might have blown had I not discovered damage) I can't help you with this. To partially hijack your thread however I'd like to point out an interesting observation: Many of the different brand ST radial tires available on the net have the same (Goodyear Marathon) tread pattern.

Many companies have products manufactured by others to their own specifications of course so It's quite possible that the tread pattern is the only similarity amoung them. It's also possible that those made in the US and Canada are identical.

To get back to age and why they fail: there are likely too many variables that tires are exposed to for anyone to have worthwhile research data. Good luck with that however.

I just think that if a tire loses chunks of tread or the sidwall fails but the tread looks good, some history behind that tire might be somewhat telling of why these things happen. I could be wrong but it's worth looking into if people will chime in on the subject.
And maybe you could help. How many years do you keep the same tires?
Cheri

[fcatwo]

We had the 5th wheel for 10yrs and had three sets of tires plus two or three damaged replacements. We replaced the originals after 5 yrs and put the 3rd set on just before selling it. Like most, the second set still looked good but I wasn't about to let some unsuspecting person drive off with our trailer and old tires. Sold it on a consignment lot so don't know who bought it. The new tires may have helped sell it.

I might mention that I was responsible for at least two of the problem tires. I put a knot on one when I hit the side of a cattle guard and the other was from a sharp curb I caught getting into a service station. I may have damaged the third one as well but was not aware of it. No problems with the TM.