We will be getting together again in 5 weeks for our sons wedding but, again, it will be too short of a visit.
We took our time Sunday morning getting on the road. We were headed for Elkhart Indiana where we would spend the night. We planned to arrive before 4pm but even the best laid plans go astray. We were about 50 miles away when one of tires on the 5er threw it's tread off :-o
I pulled over right away and was able to get the spare installed in fairly short order. We do have Good Sam Emergency Road Service but using the air supply on the truck and my impact gun I can change a tire pretty easily. No sense sitting on the side of the road waiting for what could be a long time when I can be back on the road in 20 minutes myself. :-)
The tires we had were Goodyear Marathons and you don't have to search long to find a lot of people having problems with them. Rudee and I discussed it and decided to go ahead and replace all of the tires on the 5er with heavier duty ones. I knew it was going to be expensive but since this is the 2nd blow out in less than a year we had to do something.
I have weighed the rig and we are within specifications for the existing axles and tires but heavier tires with a better speed and weight rating will give us better piece of mind (I hope). The tires we are buying are 14 ply Goodyear G614 radials with "Made in the USA" stamped on them. No more Chinese rubber for me!
Monday morning I called Goodyear and reported having problems and they directed me to a nearby dealer. I called them and they had the type and size of tires I wanted so we packed everything up and headed over.
The manager came out and inspected the old tires and called Goodyear with his findings. He spent the better part of an hour just communicating back and forth with them before saying they would only warranty one of the old tires for a whopping $50! The one that threw the tread caused some minor damage to a floor cross member and the fender molding so that has to be handled separately. I was not too happy with their decision and will be addressing it with corporate soon.
The manager said it would take them about 1 1/2 hours to change all 4 tires and the spare so we decided to get an early lunch to kill some time. We were hoping to get on the road by noon and he was estimating we would be done by 12:30 so no problem. Unfortunately the manager was a bit optimistic on his time estimation :-(. We were gone for well over an hour getting lunch and when we returned the right side wheels had been removed and they were waiting on the tires to arrive from their "warehouse". The technician said the warehouse was nearby and the manager was picking them up, He told me it shouldn't take him more than 1 1/2 hours once the tires arrived. Yep, another 1 1/2 hours ..... crap! The tires finally arrived and were mounted, balanced and put on the 5er. We pulled out of the lot at 2:30pm only took them 3 hours and 45 minutes to replace my 5 tires. Yep, Goodyear is gonna hear about that one too. So if you are ever in the RV capitol of Elkhart, Indiana and need tires, I would not recommend Masten Goodyear unless you really want to make a day of it!
Once back on the road we made decent time and arrived in Lavonia, Michigan in about 4 hours. We were a little later than we planned but you just have to roll with the punches I guess.
While deployed at a storage facility we will be parked on site. Each facility is a little different and this one has some challenges. The first was getting parked near the electric plug in. They installed a 50 amp RV hook up but it is at the rear of one of the storage buildings down a narrow alleyway with very little room to maneuver. I swear I don't know how we did it but we managed to shoe horn our rig into position. Poor Rudee was running from one side of the rig to the other helping me. There is no water or sewer hook ups but we will be fine for the few days we are here.
Tuesday will be our first training day and looks to be busy since there will be an auction here later this week. Wish us luck! I'll keep you posted.
That's the one thing I worry about the most..the tires on the RV. We've been sitting for a year, but still. We've put aside $$ for replacements :)
ReplyDeleteWe have Goodyear G tires on our 5er. We also completely lost the tread on one tire. We never even noticed it happening until we pulled into a campground and saw the damage to the side of our unit. Goodyear paid for the repairs to our unit and a new tire. A year later we noticed another tire starting to peel so changed it immediately to the spare. Goodyear paid for half the replacement tire, but I had to fight with corporate to get that. Our two remaining tires are now four years old and we will be replacing them soon. Needless to say, we watch those tires like hawks!!
ReplyDeleteSo I take it this means you are skipping the sugar beet harvest and Amazon?
ReplyDeleteIt's always something! We leave Oregon in a few weeks and have allowed ourselves plenty of time to get to Fernley. You just never know! Happy belated birthday!
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