SEVERE tire wear followed by blowout at 55mph

To recap, we were driving in Maine , near the end of a 2,000 mile, three week road trip, when a tire blew to shreds on my Jayco x23b. As the very nice AAA guy was putting the spare on my left rear of a dual axle set, he pointed out We Had a much bigger problem....all the other three tires were worn right down to the steel belt showing, all on the INSIDE of the tires. So, we crawled to a tire dealer in Harrington,Me, where we met another super nice and honest guy who ordered four Goodyear ST175/80r13's for next day delivery. His price was LOWER than the Walmart online price!

Then, we limped into Bangor,Maine, to McKays RV , a Jayco dealer, who said he could take a look the next day, so we once again overnighted unscheduled. Mike Sr, another super decent and honest guy, told us we were ok to drive the remaining 600 miles to my dealer in Ontario, but that I should get new axles and new tires , under warranty , the two year one from Jayco, once we got back.

We drove back all the way at 50mph or so on the brand new Goodyears, without a problem, but presumably with the tires wearing unevenly once again.

So now my trailer is sitting at my dealer's,waiting for inspection . Questions I have, begging for feedback:

1. The Dexter axle manual says that when all tires wear out on the inside of the tire,it's due to 'loss of camber' and alignment is the remedy.Anyone else had something like this happen to them?

2. Steve, Mike's  service manager told me they don't do alignment, they replace the axles. Has anyone had any experience with axle replacement? We are still in the two year warranty period.

3. I am fearing I am going to get told there's nothing wrong with the axles by my dealer, who is fairly small and is having a trailer axle guy from down the road look at it. Can anyone suggest what would be my next step?

4. I've done a lot of reading about this and it seems there are tons of measurements that can be taken, but with my pea brain, I find it hard to understand what's what. If I get given a bunch of numbers, is there anyone here who can interpret them for me? Or can you tell me what numbers I should be asking for, with respect to camber, axle bend, etc?

5. Overloading was not and never has been an issue with my towing. On the day when the tire blew out while driving, there was not more than 400 lb in and on the trailer, including propane tanks and batteries, and my side sticker says my max is 572 added lbs. We've never ever had enough extra weight in the trailer to get anywhere near that. Would anyone agree with me that when all four tires wear all evenly in the same place down to the belts exposed, overloading in this scenario is anyway highly unlikely ?


6. Ever since we got the trailer, I've noticed that the rear tires are tilted off-vertical when parked, especially when parked on an angle. I've always been told 'that's normal'... Anybody else ever noticed this degree of 'camber'?

7. Some would say, well you should have noticed that when you periodically checked your tires. A month ago when I was towing home thru my city, a guy followed me home to tell me he thought my tires were 'bent on an unhealthy angle' while driving. He and I both looked from the back and it was noticeable but not excessively while parked. We certainly didn't see any belts showing on the tires. I called my dealer the next day and was told 'that's normal. Also when I tightened all the wheel lugs before leaving for this recent trip , I never noticed any wear on the inside of any tire. Either it wasn't there or its in a place when you just can't see it without pulling the tire off. My question here is, how long would it take for all 4 tires to wear this badly... A long period of time, eg 10,000 miles, or could it happen in just a few hundred miles of driving?

Sorry for the length, but my reading of these forums tells me there are some very intelligent and knowledgable folks out there who can help me get through this. At the very least, we've all been there (or somewhere around there) and done something like this.  If You are one of the experts on this, or have had a similar experience, please post?

How old were the tires?

SeilerBird said:

How old were the tires?

Click to expand...

Tom, I don't think the age of the tires were an issue here but it could be contributing. The remaining three tires were worn down so bad that the steel belts were showing.

Alignment on a single axle trailer is kind of ... odd.
Alignment on a double axlie mostly means making sure the axles are parallel.

However chamber can be caused by an axle that is OVERLOADED (or underloaded) as this can cause the axle to bow down a bit wearing the inside tires and the inside of the tire faster.

Park the RV on a segmented scale for a bit and get the axle weight

Are you the original owner or did you buy it used? If it was used, the 1st owner may have overloaded it and possibly bent the axles as John stated.

Hi there. thank you all for the feedback. a few answers. We bought the trailer brand new in January of last year. We estimate that the trailer tires have 12,000 miles on them. The remaining tread on each is by no means down to the wear bar or even the 3/32" inch tread remaining, so we are kind of thinking something very unusual happened to all four tires, including the exact same wear pattern on each.

I'm glad someone mentioned the bearings because that was my first suspicion/cause...I thought maybe I had neglected them. The RV dealer in Bangor right away discounted bearings because the exact same thing is happening on each tire. Also, the Dexter manual recommends repack at the 12,000 mile mark, right about where we are.

Another confusing thing about bearings is its hard to know which Dexter supplied bearings we have ... Their manual talks about 'EZ lube ' bearings and 'Nevr lube' bearings and I'm not sure which ones our trailer has. I intend to call Dexter on Tuesday to find out , once I give them the serial number on the axle.

So, I am hoping for more feedback of any kind and am very willingnto'provide as much more feedback as I can. Thank you once again!

Do the tires have sufficient clearance above them?

Axles bent from a previous overload would still track fairly straight. Usually only one tire in a miss-aligned pair will wear excessively. Very unusual to have the same uneven wear on all 4 tires.. where's the rub?

Could the axles by chance be installed upside down? as in axle arch center points down instead of up