Do you carry a mounted spare tire?

[dalemschultz]

We recently had an outside dually tire go flat on a long trip and it really brought home the idea that we need to at least consider carrying a spare. While we do carry a roadside assistance plan for things like that, we're often in remote areas of the West with limited cell service or perhaps we're a long distance from help. I want to be self-sufficient in our Motorhome, but the size of these G670's is daunting. From your experience, what is the best method to follow? Carry just a spare tire? A mounted tire? What tools, like long pry bars, massive jack, and shovels will make swapping the flat tire for a spare doable? Is changing tires on a 22.5" rim even doable in the field. Even though our Camelot has an auxiliary compressor connection, and I carry a good hose/gauge, how do you get enough air into the tire to seal the beads at the start of the inflation? Inquisitive minds want to know!



As it turned out, there was nothing wrong with the tire! No screw or nail or anything causing the tire to lose integrity. Perhaps it was a bad road rut or something we hit. Roadside assistance needed 3 hours to get to us and they brought a $1,000 tire that was hard to find and not even necessary. The service call was covered, but it was well over $1,100!


Thanks so much in advance for offering your experiences to us. We're learning!


Dale & Brooke & Phoenix

[Ken Thompson]

Just carrying a tire that big would take up a lot of space. The lug nuts are very very tight, they say around 400 ft lbs. I’m not sure you could get enough leverage with a bar to get them loose, especially on the duals. Personally, I have a large 1” drive air wrench and a 30 ton bottle jack so I can take them off to polish them from time to time in my shop, but don’t take it on the road. I don’t think the coach would put out enough volume of air to run the air gun. I have AAA and FMCA insurance that will cover the roadside cost.

[Loren Rice]

A few years ago I had a front left tire blow,. Turns out the motor home to us then was recently purchased. The tires were great but I doubt any one including me had checked the air pressure till the night before our ill fated trip. I have deduced that the valve core leaked a small amount of air after I checked air pressure the night before (was good then) But a hour into our outing the tire blew. I was told was because of low air pressure. I saw on one of the tire company's blog that a truck tire is considered flat when pressure goes be low 80% of side wall speck.
So it was a holiday week end Friday to be exact-- took hours for service to show up because tire size seemed hard to find. Also many people seem to be off for the 4of July -- it was just hard for the road service people to find a responder.
Since then I have carried a mounted spare and have never needed it again. But have always felt secure in knowing that I could just ask for a service person to swap out my spare.
But then I got concerned what it I'm in a wee corner of remoteness? So I got a jack and one of those torque multiplier lug nut removers. I was doubtful of the nut remover cause the nuts should be on at about 400 ftlbs, but it works well . So that's my experience and response.

[dalemschultz]

Originally Posted by Ken Thompson

Just carrying a tire that big would take up a lot of space. The lug nuts are very very tight, they say around 400 ft lbs. I’m not sure you could get enough leverage with a bar to get them loose, especially on the duals. Personally, I have a large 1” drive air wrench and a 30 ton bottle jack so I can take them off to polish them from time to time in my shop, but don’t take it on the road. I don’t think the coach would put out enough volume of air to run the air gun. I have AAA and FMCA insurance that will cover the roadside cost.

Thanks Ken.

[Outbound]

I'm getting ready to replace my MH tires, have been thinking it might be a good idea to keep one of the old tires just in case we have a flat, my existing tires still look good but have aged out, there is zero room on MH for tire but my tow vehicle is a truck with bed cover so it would allow room for spare.
Thinking this may be the way to roll.

[CountryB]

I want to carry a spare - I have the tools to change a tire on the road, but don't have any place to carry a spare (it won't fit through the basement doors).

I thinking of getting this (but I'd need to modify the way it mounts since I have the bike carrier on the back).

Roadmaster Inc. - Tow Bars, Braking Systems & RV Accessories

[K7JV]

Aside from the shiny finish, how many of our wheels are actually dimensionally the same? I believe that my outside drive wheels and my tag wheels are identical. I don't know if the inside drive wheel and the front wheel are identical but mounted with the deep side in, or not. I suspect they are, with the exception of the shiny finish.

On our '06 Dynasty, the torque specification is for 500 ft-lbs. There are torque multiplier one could carry, but I really would not be comfortable working with that kind of lug nut torque. Also, I suspect the weight of the tire alone, much less with a wheel included, would be more than I would be able to reasonably manage, especially on the side of the road, under adverse conditions, not to mention the storage space required for a spare.

I WOULD NOT GO AROUND THE BLOCK WITHOUT A GOOD TIRE MONITORING SYSTEM on our coach!! We have sensors on our tow vehicle, too, and we never pull without it in service. There are just too many horror stories out there as a result of tire failures. And I'm sure it can be shown that many if not most of the failures are the result of inflation issues, and a good monitor system will go a long ways towards avoiding that kind of tragedy! Head off the problem before it happens! We have a friend who would not have totaled his coach if he would have had a tire monitor in use.

I will add that I regularly check my pressures, but I do it with the tire monitor. Every time you pull a valve stem cap and unseat the schrader valve to check the pressure you introduce the possibility of creating a new slow leak.

I know. This is one person's opinion, and opinions are like other things that everyone has, but I won't go there. But IMHO, todays high quality tires are incredibly reliable if they are not subjected to abuse, overloading or improper inflation. I'd invest in a good tire monitoring system and leave the spare tire in the tire shop.

[The Brews Cruise]

I carry an unmounted spare in one of my basement storage bays. A mounted spare would only be good if the matching wheel on the coach is the one that had a flat tire. The front wheels are different than the rear outside wheels. Not sure about the rear inside wheels. Having an unmounted spare would save a lot of time and trouble if the roadside assistance service did not have my specific tire size in stock. I'm not going to attempt to R&R the 22.5" wheels myself to change the tire. I don't even have the equipment or a torque wrench large enough to handle that duty.

[Soppy]

I carry a mounted spare in my coach. Being 19.5" , it is quite a bit lighter than the 22.5" tires. When I drove truck , I always had a spare 22.5" tire and the equipment to change the tire. Operating in Northern Ontario, Canada , roadside assistance was virtually unavailable. I've changed many tires on the truck on the side of the road without impact or torque multiplier tools . Not an easy task , but it can be done. I still change tires on my farm tractors and backhoes without any special equipment.

[Old Wrench]

Originally Posted by Ken Thompson

Just carrying a tire that big would take up a lot of space. The lug nuts are very very tight, they say around 400 ft lbs. I’m not sure you could get enough leverage with a bar to get them loose, especially on the duals. Personally, I have a large 1” drive air wrench and a 30 ton bottle jack so I can take them off to polish them from time to time in my shop, but don’t take it on the road. I don’t think the coach would put out enough volume of air to run the air gun. I have AAA and FMCA insurance that will cover the roadside cost.

The wheels on a coach are torqued to 500 ft lbs.
So unless you carry a very good air impact you are not going to remove them unless you have a very long breaker bar.
The size and weight of the tire/wheel make it very hard to carry.
You can in fact change a tire on a wheel using a tire hammer and a bar as tiremen have been doing it for years....but unless you have a bead blaster getting the bead to seat is a difficult task.
So that is why semi trucks do not carry a spare.

[AFChap]

I carry an unmounted spare. I always keep the best of the old tires when I buy new tires. I carry the unmounted spare on a pull-out tray in a large bay. It does take up some space, but I also store stuff inside it.

A couple of years ago I had a sidewall puncture on an outside dual just before arriving at my home base. Because I was replacing the rear tires the next week I drove the last few miles at 25-30 mph to avoid blocking traffic on a narrow two lane road ... I did slow traffic down, but didn't block it. The next day a mobile tire guy came out and, using his own large bottle jack and air tools powered by his truck, removed the punctured tire and mounted my spare WITHOUT REMOVING THE WHEEL!! It was amazing to watch, and pretty quick. He said doing a front was even easier than a rear outer. I suspect they could do an inside dual by removing the outer and leaving the inner wheel mounted.

I have a lug wrench mounted to a compartment wall (came with the coach) that has never been touched, and a 15 ton bottle jack that has never been used.

[Jag73e]

I carried an unmounted 22.5 spare (in hard to find size) in a roof rack covered with a sunbrella cover. Easy to access, used it once in 15 yrs. don’t carry one now on the new rig as tire size 295 readily available at almost all truck stops.

[dalemschultz]

Thanks Loren,


It's one thing getting the lug nuts off, then you have to lift the whole shebang off the wheel studs, and then lift the spare onto the studs and align. I've heard that a couple long handled shovels can come in handy here.

[dalemschultz]

Thank you Outbound,


So you would be equipped and able to take the flat tire off the rim and put the new tire on the rim, as well as removing and replacing it with the new tire? what tools will you need for all that? Another thought that occurs to me is if we are more than a short distance off the pavement (which we are quite often), Roadside Assistance will not cover the work. Leaves me feeling vulnerable.