We really got into some back country roads today. Turns out, it is really hard to get Streets & Trips to stick with decent roads. I felt really comfortable with the roads because there are no high speeds and there is lots to look at. After about two hours of mostly country roads we got onto a 4-lane divided highway in central Ohio and suddenly the coach started vibrating at a pace that made it hard to tell if it was a tire or the road. Seems that lots of paving lately has a sort of ripple effect and it reminds you of a tire out of round. I stopped when it got a little serious and checked the tires but could see or feel nothing wrong. I drove a little farther and was about to stop and check again when the middle tire on the driver’s side separated – the steel belt came loose from the casing and broke. It hit a bunch of stuff and did some new damage to the fiberglass but nothing that didn’t already need fixing. Fortunately it didn’t damage any suspension components.

I changed the tire while Carol called around for a tire store that could supply 6 or 7 new tires. Once we got going again we drove to the store and had them install 6 new Delta Essential tires. These are private branded tires made by major companies as store brands. Delta tires are available mostly in the East but I don’t know anything more than that about them. They were much cheaper than the BF Goodrich, Firestones, Michlins, etc. I put about 50 highway miles on them this afternoon and the feel good.

This thing about my old tires is that I paid top dollar for them even at Costco. They were Michlins and were supposed to be good tires. I bought them 5 years ago, put 45,000 miles on them in those 5 years and rotated them often. One of the tires they took off had another tread separation waiting to happen – wires from the steel belt were poking through the tread, another had some odd wear that could have been the same thing, a third had a nail in it but had not started leaking yet, and then there is the one that failed today. The Michlin web site says that if you put 10,000 miles per year on your RV tires that you should not have to worry about aging – I came very close to that and the tires were only 5 years old. Is it worth buying top of the line tires? I don’t know, but I didn’t this time. I will figure out what to do about a spare when I get home – maybe go to the 2 tires per year plan that Dan Gregg (fellow GMCer) and others use.

Sorry, no photos again.