[Richard]

I am recovering from Covid, so I don’t have much energy other that to provide a long tale about some critical mistakes I made when I replaced all the tires on our coach prior to our 2020 trip. You have my permission to laugh at my folly. 

First, the tires were 6 years old according to date codes with very minor cracking. They would have easily gone one or two more years. But we were sitting at home waiting for the lockdown to end, and I was bored, and started to look at getting some new shoes. After shopping around, I found that National Tire Concierge Services seemed like the way to go. I want to be very clear. The whole debacle that followed was NOT David Ward’s fault. He worked patiently and tirelessly with me to try to rectify the problems.

David had the tires delivered to Snider Tire in Ocala. I show up on the morning appointment, check in with the service manager, and he tells me the installer was on a late call, and will be in shortly to install my tires. Cool. It’s a cool morning and I am sitting in the door drinking coffee when the install truck pulls up at the other end of the parking lot. The installer climbs out of the truck SCREAMING an obscenity over and over. I immediately do not want this guy touching my rig. I follow him in the building and start looking for the service manager. I want to call this deal off. I search for twenty minutes with no luck, not answering pages. When I get back to the coach, the gorilla already has all the back tires off. He is calmer. Now, I notice, that the rear tires he is installing are not steer tires. They look like dump truck lugged tires. This was a huge mistake on my part. David had told me they would be XDN2 tires, and I sort of looked at them in the Michelin catalog and said ok. It was clear seeing them in person, that there was a low probability that I was going to like this. One of the few times in my life that i was physically intimated prevented me from putting the brakes on this operation. I was no match for a 6 4 280 pounder with crack teeth. 

So he mounted the 365s on the front, and took them inside for spin balancing. As soon as I hit interstate speed I had rhythmic vibration. Now I am the one screaming obscenities. 

So, in my effort to take control of this situation, I install beads in the rear tires with a homemade device that blows them through the valve stem. It doesn’t help. I am not just judging by the seat of my pants. I have vibration analysis software on my phone, and I would Carefully maintain a speed on a smooth road while Rhonda place the phone above every tire in the coach. I had data. 

Our first layover was in Chattanooga. On the way up, at one rest area, I added beads to the previously spun balanced fronts. No improvement. So I contacted the Michelin truck guy in Chattanooga, had all the beads removed and all eight tires spin balanced. These installers are worse than than guy in Orlando. First they significantly damaged the rims with their tire iron. Second one of them applied the stick on weight to that outside of the rim. When the error was pointed out, he removed the weight, but instead of using solvent to remove the adhesive, he used a wire wheel on die grinder.  ARrrggggh. AS we are leaving Chattanooga I hear and feel weights coming off the wheels. I find some of them stuck to the hood of the tow car that evening. Shop manager took one look at the drive tires and said you will be removing those. Seen them tried before on high end coaches. They always come off. And I called them back after the weights flying off, and they refunded what i paid them

OH yeah, replaced the tow car windshield in Chattanooga where the dump truck tires promptly cracked. Towed the car fo 75k miles with no issues, and first long drive with lugged tires results in broken windshield.