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5 Blowouts?? Were All These On Your TM? Any With The 15" Tires Or All On The 14"?
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We have always travelled a lot with our TM, piling up tons of heavily-loaded hot-day miles at 65 mph on Interstates, and a lot of slower miles on poorer roads. We've done so since we bought our first TM in 2001. Back around 2006, after years of successful travelling, we had a sudden string of tire failures with the 14-inch Marathons. I blamed the tires - some say that Goodyear had switched production to China. But later it turned out that it might have been a problem with the valve stems - again, Chinese, and eventually recalled. We never figured out which was at fault.
Anyway, because I experienced so many failures, and because I wrote them up on this board, this is where the whole "let's change over to 15-inch tires" thing began. Bobby at West Monroe Tire (wmtire) in Louisiana pitched in to help with lots of real tire knowledge and some tires for us to experiment with, and the move to higher load-rated tires began. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Tire Experiment. A number of people changed tires, and the results are still slowly coming in.
To come to the end of the story, my string of failures ended abruptly when I switched to the 15-inch Marathons. I don't know if it was the move to higher load-rated tires or better valves, but I am perfectly pleased with the way things turned out. Once again I say "Thanks, Bobby!" By the way, I note that TM has switched to all 15-inch Marathons.
The long sad story is split among several threads in the Tires forum. Anyone who wants to review the situation will find a lot of it in these threads. It all started in Iowa City, Iowa, in 2004 ...
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ead.php?t=1722
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ead.php?t=4308
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ead.php?t=5586
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ead.php?t=6245
Bill