Motor Home Tire Rotation & Balance, tire balance Options

[Butch]

The tire issue has been beat to death, but I feel the tires on our motor home need to be rotated. Now I have read, somewhere, that motor home tires do not have to be rotated. Having called my heavy duty mechanic on this issue, he stated that the tires should be rotated and balanced every 10,000 miles. He then proceeded to inform me as to how they balance the tires. They dismount the tire and place a bag of powder inside and re-mount the tire. This is where I have a problem. I have spoke to a friend, who is a manager of a Ryder Truck Rental establishment, and he state to me that the powder is not a good way to balance tires. I have also spoke to our local supt of highways, he also did not favor this form of balancing tires. I do not have any vibration, so I was going to have the tires just rotated. Before I do this, I would like to pose the question, "any ideas" from other motor home owners ?? Your thoughts and opinions would be greatly appreciated. The tire size is: 235/80/22.5 Thank you.

[John Blue]

Butch,

Do you have a problem with the tires? We also run the 22.5" truck tires. At eight years of service we replaced all six with new ones that looked like the old ones. Before end of the day some truck had my old tires on and gone. Two front tires were run on spin balancer and weights were around 1 oz. on each tire. On rear tires no balancer was used. I use truck tires due to heavy build and two steel plys in sidewalls over one ply in RV tires. Tires will run around 100,000 to 250,000 miles on a truck. Do you think a motorhome will damage tires in the time we use them? We could drive around the earth 24/7 for years and if do not pick up any nails and tires will stay in good shape.

My view is change them around eight years of age and keep the correct air pressure (a tire killer). We can run at any speed and think we are in the tow car, less noise in motorhome. Save your money to by diesel fuel over messed around the balancer iss. Tires on a large motorhome are not a problem.