New Tires

One week before our big trip to Yellowstone, we tried to go camping in what turned out to be a huge rain storm. We ended up traveling down a muddy road that was was built out of some hard pack rocky roadbase. As the water eroded the road, it left a lot of exposed rocks which did a real number on these crappy tires you get form the factory. It still amazes me that you can spend 50k on a trailer that ships with $300 worth of tires. It's one thing for a regular trailer to come with crappy tires, but a toy hauler should be expected to spend a great deal of time off road and in more nasty conditions.

The tire luckly didn't blow on the freeway so I didn't have any damage. I swapped the spare, (which didn't match by the way) and limped home. Just my luck too as the spare ended up with a huge nail in the sidewall somehome on my way home too. Luckily it didn't blow also!

Anyway, I knew before I even ordered the trailer that it was going to come with cheap and crappy tires. I had really hoped to be able to make it through one summer before buying new tires. Oh well, at least they didn't fail in the middle of our big Yellowstone trip.

The next day I went to my local Sams club which had the best price on BF Goodrich Commercial TA tires. I got them in the 235/85-16E and ended up at $1005.00 out the door for six of them. These are slightly larger than the 235/80-16E tires that they came with, but ended up fitting really well. Also notice from the photos below the original Triangle branded tires had bulges on each tire in a few places which never gave me great confidence in their quality at all. These new tires are also LT tires instead of ST which means that they are not only rated for the deisred load capacity, they are also designed for the heat generated by the higher speeds. ST tires are rated at 65mph max! In my trip up to Yellowstone, I was comfortably doing 77 mph across those longer flat stretches when possible. I never dared get much over 65 with the old China bombs.

Old Tire and spare

New tire

New tires up close - no bulging!

Sitting a little more level also with the added 3/4" inch.

Yellowstone!!!

Our big trip finally arrived! We spent 9 days across Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park. We've been planning this trip for about two years and this was one of the main reasons we upgraded our trailer. The trip went great and the kids had a ton of fun. Major highlights were the Grand Canyon, watching a Grizzly much on a dead elk, two separate wolf sightings, watching the kids catch a 22" rainbow and an 18" cutthroat trout and then canoeing in Jackson lake.

Now, on to the trailer :) I was able to squeeze in a few mods before I left, nameley some pole holders and new tires, but I'll post more about about them later. We drove over 1100 miles over the course of the trip, with probably 700 miles with the trailer attached. Yellowstone has some pretty windy roads, but the trailer tracked and towed great. The funniest part of the trailer trip was stopping at a truck stop in northern Idaho and having a bunch of Chinese and German tourists pull up and start taking pictures of the trailer. I guess they don't make them that big overseas.

Pulling out...

Madison Campground - Yellowstone

Colter Bay RV Park - Grand Teton

Grand Teton Overlook