They’re supposed to be round and roll!

MOBI (the new to me Winnebago View) had great looking tires when I bought it.  After all, it only had 22,500 miles on it.  However, they were the original tires and were way past their useful life.  If you looked close, you could see the cracking in the sidewalls.  I knew I would have to replace them shortly.

Even before I went up to Vermont to pick MOBI up, I began researching tires.  How difficult can it be to buy tires anyway??  MOBI is 24 1/5 feet long, 11 feet tall and has a Gross Vehicle Weight of 11,030 pounds.  I learned that this eliminates a whole lot of tire shops if you want the tires installed.  And then there is the added issue of having “duallys” (dual rear wheels).  Oh, and there is the added challenge of finding tires in the proper load range for this heavy vehicle.

After some research, I finally turned to Tire Rack dot Com, both for tires and locating an installer.  The closest shop to me that might handle putting tires on MOBI was in Ellijay (about 40 miles away).  I thought it would be best to drive over to Ellijay Tire Company and check the place out.  I wanted to see the facility and more importantly try to determine if they were capable of handling my needs so I drove MOBI over there.  I also wasn’t all that keen on having Tire Rack charge me $175 to ship my tires so I was interested in finding a local (well, kind of local) shop who can provide tires and good service for all my vehicles (except the Harley of course).

I spoke with Russell Miller, the owner.  He is 3rd generation I believe.  The company has been in business for 60 years and they plan to stay.  Stay??  Heck, he just opened a second brand new facility closer to me in Blue Ridge.  But, more about that later.

Russell struck me as honest and committed to providing good tires and service.  I told him I was looking for Michelins and he knew the exact tire my research had pointed me to before I told him.  Michelin LTX M / S2.  The price he quoted me was very fair and we struck a deal.

I chose to have the tires installed at his new Blue Ridge facility, Williams Tire. 2 days later, they called and said they had all 6 tires and I could come any time to get them installed.  I drove straight over and they went right to work. Both Robert (manager) and Dillon were responsive and polite. And, they absolutely knew what they were doing. The facility is loaded with state of the art equipment. And these boys know how to use it. 

We ran into a snag however. Either Dodge or Mercedes (the RV is on a Sprinter chassis and happens to have a Doge badge) put some whacky wheels on it. There is an issue with valve stems being easily accessible (especially on the dually rear wheels) and the usual metal valve stems won’t fit because of the wheel design. Robert called around and had some high pressure metal stems delivered but they were too short.  We had one side off with new tires mounted on the 3 wheels but no valve stems that would allow servicing the air pressure later on down the road. Robert said he would order some metal stems and I said lets just wait to do the other 3 wheels until they had the stems in hand. No sense in having to break down all 6 wheels and tires again in a couple days. 

The next day (there was a weekend in between) they called and said they had the valve stems so I drove over and they pulled the 3 wheels with the new tires and broke them down to replace the stems. Crap! The “standard” metal stems would not fit. The darn wheels are just too weird.

I had done quite a bit of reading (obviously not the fine print) regarding tires and valve stems on the Winnebago Speinter chassis motor homes and knew that a lot of owners switched to metal. I just didn’t realize they were purchasing their metal stems from one of two place that custom designed them for these wheels. 

I asked Robert and Dillon to go ahead and install regular rubber stems (like the original ones) and said I would research the metal stems further. They finished up mounting and balancing the tires. I will probably return if and when I get some metal stems. At the moment, the only ones I can find are about $20.00 each so I will continue to research them. 

In summary, I want to say that Williams Tire (or Ellijay Tire) did a great job, treated me fairly and went beyond what I expected to try and satisfy my metal valve stem dilemma. The folks at both locations are polite and most definitely know the tire business. I will visit them for all my automotive tire needs.

Thank you Robert and Dillon for getting the job done.