crawford wrote: Your pickup truck doesn't sit for months at a time does it? Apples and nuts right .
So you are saying that while moving, my tires are spinning too fast for the UV rays to hit the tires?
The cracks, according to the tire manufacturers, mostly come from failure to exercise the the tire to make the anti-aging compounds work better. These anti-aging compounds have nothing to do with UV light or the blockage of it. They are throughout the tire, including the rubber on the inside that never sees the light of day.
I see the covers marketed to the vanity of people with campers and sold in camper stores. But never see them marketed to boat owners, nor have I seen them in any of the local boat shops. I haven't seen them in the trailer shops that sell my car hauler or at the ATV shop that sells quad trailers.
Covering the tire does reduce the UV light hitting the tire, but it's not so much the UV light doing the damage...that's from the people that make the tires, not the people that make the covers. IMHO the covers are more cosmetic. So get the covers if it makes you feel better, but do not confuse using them to make the camper look better when parked with protecting your tires. I'll do what actually makes the tires last longer......use them.
* This post was
edited 05/06/12 09:44am by NorthernLimits *
Again ... my PU gets used maybe once a month. It's hard to believe that this is enough to keep the chemicals stirred such that it's tires haven't cracked. I guess possible -> but has GOT TO BE due to some difference in tire material formulations.
Does anybody here have an RV that has been used only about twice a year for, say, 5 years and still have tires on it that are, say, 8 years old with no cracking and no garaging and no covering? If so, what model tire do you have on it?
No idea on answer to this question, but when removing a 5 to 8 yr old set of tires with cracked sidewalls, does the inner sidewall of the inside tire on rear dually have any sidewall cracking? I doubt those 2 sidewalls (left/right tire) ever gets any UV hitting it at all.
hotbyte wrote: No idea on answer to this question, but when removing a 5 to 8 yr old set of tires with cracked sidewalls, does the inner sidewall of the inside tire on rear dually have any sidewall cracking? I doubt those 2 sidewalls (left/right tire) ever gets any UV hitting it at all.
On our '05 I had cracking starting to form on the outside tires on just the outside face. This after just 3 years. I was tempted to get them dismounted and remounted but we ended up selling the RV.
As a side note, I had Continentals on my daily driver that started dry rotting after 2 years, and the replacement Yokohamas did it in just about the same time. This was a garaged car. The other car that sat outside for years with Kumhos was fine.
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