Commercial or Car Tyres fitment to your Caravan?

Posted on 12/05/2018 13:26 by ocsid

Whilst most catastrophic caravan tyre failures are I believe as stated associated with the sidewall, I don't think they are “instantaneous” true blowouts. I think they are the inevitable outcome of wall structure overheating from running under-inflated simply because we can pick up slow punctures and drive on unaware. The running on underinflated leads to excessive sidewall flexing and drag friction both pumping a great deal of heat into particularly the sidewall. This soon denatures the compound and most non metallic reinforcing, rendering the tyre a write-off sometime before it actually disintegrates catastrophically. A carbonised "rubber" tyre is very fragile and weak!
Here in respect to withstanding excessive heating I really don't see any difference in correctly rated tyre, whether they be a modern knitted reinforcement or various numbers of laid up plys. More generally, I much prefer a knitted toroid reinforcement than the labour intensive laying up of ply sheets with their inevitable compliance variations as adjacent layers overlap, and bigger balance issues.
IMO, by far the most important thing after buying correctly rated tyres is to use a TPMS so be aware of any loss of pressure, hopefully before thermal damage writes a tyre off, either dramatically or insidiously.

Posted on 12/05/2018 13:26 by ocsid

Whilst most catastrophic caravan tyre failures are I believe as stated associated with the sidewall, I don't think they are “instantaneous” true blowouts. I think they are the inevitable outcome of wall structure overheating from running under-inflated simply because we can pick up slow punctures and drive on unaware. The running on underinflated leads to excessive sidewall flexing and drag friction both pumping a great deal of heat into particularly the sidewall. This soon denatures the compound and most non metallic reinforcing, rendering the tyre a write-off sometime before it actually disintegrates catastrophically. A carbonised "rubber" tyre is very fragile and weak!
Here in respect to withstanding excessive heating I really don't see any difference in correctly rated tyre, whether they be a modern knitted reinforcement or various numbers of laid up plys. More generally, I much prefer a knitted toroid reinforcement than the labour intensive laying up of ply sheets with their inevitable compliance variations as adjacent layers overlap, and bigger balance issues.
IMO, by far the most important thing after buying correctly rated tyres is to use a TPMS so be aware of any loss of pressure, hopefully before thermal damage writes a tyre off, either dramatically or insidiously.

Posted on 07/05/2018 23:45 by Mulan

I read a post recently that the tyres fitted to most vans including ours are car tires and as such have a 2 Ply side wall and a tyre fitter stated it would be better to fit a Commercial Style tyre, as they have a 8 ply side wall and therefore much stronger and in most cases the blowouts are through the sidewalls. It seems to make sense, as most people are saying that the tyres are running at a high PSi and the obvious weak link is a 2 ply side wall. Has anyone fitted commercial tyres to their van? If so what do they recommend?