MOTORHOME MAINTENANCE - 2016 WINNEBAGO VIEW - NEW TIRES

After all those miles from our trip to Alaska, we determined that it was about time to maybe put some new rubber on the road. Since we bought this motorhome, (used), we put on 25,000 miles just by ourselves.  We don't know how many miles were on the tires before we bought it, but we did have the date codes and they were getting close to 5 years old. One of them was looking awfully thin, even though we did have an alignment done before we went on our vacation.

After Steve's extensive research, he decided to go with the same tires that everybody else on our Winnebago View Facebook group uses. Their choice is the tried and tested Michelin's:

6 Michelin Agilis tires Cross Climate 2 

 LT 125/85 r16 

We checked around and ordered them up from a local tire place in Green Bay. We asked that they be tires that have a date code of within the last 6 months. Fresh tires make a big difference. Sometimes tire places will sell you ones that have been sitting in a storage warehouse for a couple years. They look great but they have already got a couple years time on them. Tick tock tick tock the clock is ticking. Tires on an RV should never be older than 6 years old. They age out from the inside out through the rubber. Doesn't matter how much tread is left on them. 

Date codes are a four-digit number stamped in the side of the tire. The first two digits are the week, the second two digits are the year. So something that says 2225 means it was the 22nd week of 2025. About late May / early June.

So we asked that we get fresh tires, and they called us to say the order was in the next week. Yes all the tires were made in mid to late May. So that met our needs. We also ordered up the proper valve stems at the same time (or so they thought), So we were good to go. We headed on down for our appointment at 9:00 a.m. 

They got right on it and had the front end jacked up and our old tires removed.

We inspected the new tires, and yes the date codes were correct. But sadly, they did not have the valve stems that we had ordered. They thought they had them in stock and made a mistake. We wanted the long ones that could reach out from the inner dually to the outside when matched up. This is what we were supposed to have:

Oh well, we would go with the high pressure short stems for now. It just means Steve has to lay down and crawl underneath to put on our tire pressure monitors or adjust the air on the inner dually tires.

Earlier, the weatherman said it was supposed to rain, but it held off luckily because our rig was too tall to fit in their bay. So they worked on it outside. It was hot and muggy and miserable!!!  

I hung out inside in the air conditioned waiting room for most of the time. Steve stayed outside to "keep an eye on things" as we never really trust anybody that works on our vehicles. Mistakes always seem to happen, and things get covered up before the owner ever finds out about it...

We had three technicians working on our motorhome, up in the front, they did a good job. Steve watched every step of the way and they seemed to know what they were doing.

They lowered the front end down and removed the jacks. Now they were ready to start on the back end, and that's when I came out to check and see what was going on. And also to snap a few photos...

The tires looked good, and they were exactly what we wanted. 

BUTTTTT--- THIS IS WHERE THINGS TOOK A DOWNHILL TURN! 

As they went to position the jacks in the back, they first rolled the big floor jacks right up underneath the rear end of our rig and proceeded to jack it up on the footpad ends of our very expensive $5,000 Bigfoot Leveling System!  These jacks are made to stabilize the rig and it should never be used as a "jacking point"! 

I immediately told them to stop stop stop. The workman gave me a look like I was being nuts. I went around to Steve on the other side and brought him back to see. Yes, Steve told him to immediately lower the rig and remove that jack.

I offered to go inside of the rig, remember now it's down on all six tires, to get out the manual with the specific jacking points printed by Mercedes-Benz. 

The workman said no, I could not go in the rig. 

Now they proceeded to stick the jack underneath and jack it up on the support for the shock mount! Steve then told them no, that is not where they should be jacking it up. They jacked it up anyhow and remove the tires.

Now Steve decided he better take some photos of what's going on...  It was time to take control of the situation. This was getting out of hand.

I asked again if I could go inside to get out the manual. They said no. 

We again told the third worker that there is some miscommunication going on here. That they need to use the proper jack points or it is going to either destroy our leveling system or now on this one it can damage our axle. And they will be responsible for it. 

They didn't like where Steve told them it needed to be jacked up. They complained that there wasn't enough room to get up where the proper jacking point actually is on the leaf spring mount. They said they didn't have the right equipment to get under there??

So I whipped out my phone where I pulled it up online and showed it to them. It's said it can crack the axle if they are using that spot on the shock mount. They didn't seem too interested and Steve said he refused to let them put their jack on the shock mount. It was the incorrect place and it could actually crack our axle!! 

We went inside and got the service manager. Now it was time to not get upset, and we needed to act calmly. We politely showed him on my screen of my phone where the proper recommended jack points were. Photos below.

The service manager immediately went outside and stopped all work on the vehicle. He literally got down, in his dress clothes, and crawled underneath our rig on his belly. He showed the guys exactly where the jack was needing to go. He had them haul out a different type of floor jack that got into the position and took care of it!! 

That's all it took. We thanked him profusely and let them continue on with the work. Whew! 

He also took time to take his own photos of both of the areas that the rig was erroneously jacked up incorrectly. And he wrote them both up on our work order to take note that his workers did mistakenly do that in both of those spots. Hopefully we are covered if there is any future damage??

So all is well and good... Until I mentioned after all six tires were done, verifying that they were inflated to 61 lb. as stated on our work order. Nope, they said they inflated them to 80. I said our work order says 61 which is also what it says on the door from Mercedes-Benz. That is our "magic number". 

Remember those short valve stems? That means the inner dually tires would need to be deflated before we could hit the road. The front ones and outer ones were easy to reduce down to 61. But the inner duallys needed to be taken care of by them.

So again, we had to traipse on in and talk to the service manager. He immediately went out and told the workers they had to remove the outer dually tires and remove the air back down to 61. 

I happened to overhear his words to the worker that basically said if you goofed it up, then you fix it right! I won't add the expletives. 

This meant removing the outer dually, reducing the air in the inner dually, putting back on the outer dually, and then torquing them all back up to 140 ft. lbs. in the hot sun.  The guy was so small in stature he could barely even get the torque wrench to click. He was really struggling with it, and visibly upset. Finally another technician took over for him and finished up the job correctly.

But all in all, we did get the tires that we wanted. We might not have gotten the valve stems we wanted, but at least the tires were on the rig at the proper inflation. 

When I went up to the counter to pay, the service manager kindly removed all of the mounting and balancing labor charges (over $200), without us even asking for a discount!

So this is what we got: 

6 Michelin Agilis tires Cross Climate 2

LT 125/85 r16 115RE1bsw

$233 each $1,398 

$3.50 per tire disposal fee $21 total 

Total 1,419

 sales tax $78.05 

Final total 1472.05

No charge for mounting and balancing because of errors made during installation. 

As we drove away, we were happy that it was done and we were back on the road. 

BUTTTTT--- 

(There is always a "but" isn't there?)

Steve noticed a distinct shimmy in the front end. It wasn't there before. He doesn't think the front tires were balanced properly. But we knew we had an appointment in 2 days down at Mercedes-Benz in Appleton. We would ask them to check the two front tires for balance. 

ON EXIT- Yep, sure enough, both of them were out of balance. So they took care of it for us and we did not have to go back to the original tire place. Whew!!

Here's the YouTube to go along with tonight's blog: 

And for a little bit of humor at the end of a crazy morning, just as we were ready to leave the parking lot of a nearby gas station... a tree frog was sitting on the middle of our windshield!!!

We have no idea where he came from. Maybe he was from our house, one that we evicted from our water heater vent pipe the week before??? Maybe he was living down in our dash area below the windshield under the hood. Maybe he crawled up to get some sunshine?

We weren't about to go flying down the highway and have him slide off and go smack. Instead, Steve put on his gloves and carefully removed him.  He carried him over carefully onto the grass of the parking area by the gas station.

What a guy!

He said he wore the gloves so he wouldn't get frog pee on his hands. Lol!

So Steve is happily behind the wheel of his motorhome again, and I am in the passenger side doing the navigating. We got our new tires, and things are okay.

Not sure where we are going next, but I have a few more motorhome modifications coming up in the next few blogs.