Wheeling

I was lucky when I bought the trailer as it came with 3 wheels. All of them were original U-haul wheels with the nubs to mount baby moon hubcaps. (though I wasn't lucky enough to score a set of the U-haul stamped baby moons)  The rims were in rough shape so I painted them black as the easiest way to get them with some uniform look. When I was looking to put the second spare tire mount on my tongue, I needed to get a 4th wheel. Fortunately, you can order them from U-haul truck parts Ebay shop (here).

The wheels are a nice clean white which match the new paint job well. (The newer wheels do not have the bumps to hold baby moon hubcaps though. So if you're looking for that style you'll need to find original wheels.) I opted to buy 2 new wheels and make them my main wheels and use the originals on the spare tires. I took the wheels and tires to my tire shop and had them swap them around. A new spare tire went on one of the old black rims after the tires from them had been moved to the new white rims. When I got back home I put the new white wheels on the camper and mounted the black rims on the 2 spare mounts. Having 2 spares for our 4000 mile journey was a huge comfort, especially since we'd be leaving the US on this trip.

Just for information, I use Carlisle Radial Trail (the existing tires were RH and the new spare is an HD) tires for the camper. Greenball is another highly recommended brand. Don't just buy the cheapest brand that you would normally throw on a small utility trailer that you don't use everyday. While you may not be using the camper everyday, you want something more dependable due to the number of miles you will drive when you are using it and the weight, heat impacts and bounce.  After all, it's better to not have to use your spare. For more info on tires see my earlier post.

The old lugs and lug nuts were very rusty. The old lug nuts were open-faced which allowed more rust issues on the lugs than a closed-faced lug nut. I bought some new chrome 12x1.5 close-faced lug nuts to put with my shiny new wheels. Next I tackled the rusty lugs with a wire brush to clean them up. (You can see my video on removing rust from the lugs if you need to do this.)

I like the new look. It's very clean and fresh looking. I'm currently on the search for chrome center caps to install to finish the look. I'll update when I find some that fit. Everything held up well on our big trip this summer and thankfully we didn't need to even use one of the spares.

Trailer Tires...A Camper's Biggest Friend or Foe

There's a lot to be said about tires for campers. They can make or break a trip. You always want to go through a checklist before a trip. But there's a couple things you need to consider with tires whether you own a trailer or are looking to buy one. The first thing to understand is that trailer tires take more abuse than car tires due to trailer bounce while driving. Also, they sit a lot when not being used. So trailer tires are more likely to dry rot before the tread wears out. So lets talk about two topics related to tires: how to tell the measurements/size you need, and how to tell how old a tire is.

Tire Measurements

There are a lot of numbers/codes on a tire. They all give you some information about the tire itself. Most folks are familiar with something like P225/70 R15 on your car. This is the type and size designation of the tire. P at the beginning stands for P-metric (or passenger car in the US). It's never a good idea to use P-metric tires on a trailer. They aren't designed for trailers and if you put them on a trailer you can't go by the load capacity on the tire. LT (Light Truck) and ST (Special Trailer) tires are typically used on trailers. So you should look for LT or ST for your trailer.

The second part of the code (225 in this example) is the measure in millimeters from sidewall to sidewall of the tire. The third part of the code is the aspect ration which simply means the percentage of the height to the width of the tire. Basically the bigger the number here, the taller the sidewall. R stands for radial (which is most tires today). And the last digit is the wheel/rim diameter that the tire is supposed to fit. There are plenty of information on tire websites that goes into more specifics but that's the basics on tire size. My tires on the U-Haul are ST175/80 R13.

If you buy an old camper, you may find Bias Ply tires rather than Radial tires. They are sized differently. Your best bet is to take the tire/ or the numbers on the side of the tire to a tire store to get a replacement. Bias ply tires have been phased out over the years in favor of the softer ride of radials.

How old is my tire?

Knowing the age of the tire is just as important as looking at the tread (especially for those of you buying a camper who may have to drive it a ways to get home). If you want to know the gritty specifics on why tires dry rot, ask your friend who took chemistry in college or Google it. Basically, think of old rubber bands, The oils and chemicals in the rubber break down and some evaporate over time and the rubber gets more brittle. This makes it more prone to cracking and blowouts. A big cause (or accelerator) of this is UV rays from the sun. For those who are new to campers, you probably thought those tire covers on other campers were just for looks or to keep the tires clean. Not really. Veteran RVers know that shielding them from the sun will make them last longer. You may even want to get a cover for that spare tire to make it last longer.

All tires, in the US at least, are manufactured with an Tire Identification Number (TIN). The same code is stamped on every tire in a batch. The TIN is the code after the DOT part on the tire. as you can see in the picture on the right from my tire. What we care about is the last 3 or 4 digits on the tire. For tires made before 2000, there will be 3 digits at the end, for those made after 2000 it's 4 digits. So right away if I bought a camper with there being 3 digits only at the end of the TIN, I'd go get a new tire. For those made after 2000, the 4 digit code is easy to read, the last 2 digits are the year the tire was manufactured. That will tell you how old the tire is. (The preceding 2 digits are the week of the year.) So in my example to the right, This tire (my spare) was made during the 16th week of 2012 (1612).

So now you know how check your tires. I can't stress how important this is for those buying used or vintage campers to look at the dates on the tires. When I bought our U-Haul fiberglass camper, the tires on the camper were decent age but the spare was a bias ply that was probably 20-25 yrs old. I replaced that the first week as my very first "project" on the camper. I just wasn't comfortable trusting that spare if I needed it. Oh and always carry a spare! If you are buying a camper and it doesn't have a spare tire, then I'd recommend trying to find one before you go on a trip.

I hope this helps some of you. Feel free to drop me a line or comment below if you have any questions.

Spare Me

So when we first got the camper I was happy it came with a spare tire. After looking at the tire in more detail, I realized it was an original Uhaul tire. Well I'm not one to trust a 20+ yr old tire that's been hanging off the back of a camper parked in the woods for who knows how long. So I figured I'd get a new one. In going to take the tire off. I discovered that someone had just drilled a couple holes in the bumper and put two bolts through it. And they were not even the same size. So that left me with wanting to put an actual tire mount on the back end.

Well I decided to patch the holes in the bumper (Turned out there were two more further down; I guess they drilled too low to start with). So I patched the bumper with some bondo and smoothed it out. I grabbed some cans of high heat enamel spray paint (the kind you can use on grills) and went to work coating the bumper and then the whole frame because I didn't like the way it looked. I also ended up using it on all the rims to make them look a bit nicer. I then found a mount made for a trailer tongue but it would work. I got one similar to this one at Lowes. Notice that there are two similar models out there one that comes with 2 separate steel bars on the back side and one like this where the back is a solid piece. I preferred the solid piece; it just felt sturdier. Here's how I installed it on the rear bumper. (You'll noticed I turned the back plate around so that it fit better in the curve of the bumper.)

(Update: See my post on adding a second spare tire mount for the long trips on the tongue: The Second Spare.)