Made it today

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Rene T

Site Team
Joined
May 20, 2011
Posts
22,359
Location
Farmington NH
Had to go to New Port Richey to pick up a fifth wheel for a friend of mine. It was a 2006. The first thing I did was check the tire date codes. They were all manufactured in 2005. Even the spare. The spare had a steel cable wrapped around it with a padlock on it. Off course, no key.  :mad:  We started cutting the cable with a small hacksaw but that was useless. The frame holding the spare was quite rusty and I was afraid the tire may fall off while traveling down the road so I decided to leave the cable attached. We drove all the way back to Lakeland FL using mostly State/County roads to stay off the major roads like I-75 and I-4. I didn't dare go over 45 MPH. And we made it. My fingers were crossed the entire way. That as a nerve racking drive. It took us 2 hours where it should have been a little over 1 hour.
 
You're a great person Rene! May the favors be rolling back your way. Pulling the fiver for someone was a good thing, but to actually go through with it on 13 year old tires was above and beyond. :))
 
Recently I had to move my newly purchased 1992 5th wheel.

I refused to look at the date codes. I checked and adjusted the tire pressure several times before moving it (tires were holding air nicely). The spare looked original.  :eek:

Several movers refused me service without me knowing tire dates. I just wanted 50 more miles out of the existing tires and they looked and acted good enough for me. I put full insurance on the rig including roadside service. I found a prof transporter who said he moved anything and everything and had very little trouble. He said he had even filled questionable tired with green goop or some such stuff (fix-a-flat?) and delivered rigs intact that way.

I asked him to go super easy on my new baby. When we finally moved the rig, a friend drove me behind the 5th wheel in his camper van. If anything went wrong we had the camper and roadside assistance.

Angels got me here in one piece. Tires are still holding air. Spare belongs at Smithsonian.  ;D

While I don't recommend my technique... it worked for me.  ;)

If and when I plan to travel, I will put all new tires on the rig, but since I bought this as a destination RV, I didn't want to invest in tires to go 50 miles.
 
Years ago I had a flat on my cl a and when the tow driver lowered the spare found it had no air.  Point being is to check the spare's date code and the air pressure.
 
In one of my former lives I co-owned a heavy truck repair and recovery/towing business. As fill in work to keep our trucks and drivers busy, we had contracts with several municipalities to recover abandoned vehicles to help clean up the countryside. I was always amazed at some of the vehicles we pulled out of fields and woods where they'd been sitting for sometimes 50 years or more, only to find at least a couple of tires that were still holding air. We always hauled them on a flat bed or recovery dolly instead of their own wheels for safety of course, but I sometimes wondered how those tires would have held up rolling down the road again.
 
I just had a tire expire on me, it just happened rather suddenly on I15, 1 mile from my destination. The Date code showed that the tires were a little less than 5 years old. I now have new tires all the way around.
 
Back
Top Bottom