Spare tires for dual wheel campers

[VicHanson]

After have two flat tires on my last trip to Cotahuasi (about 125 Km of rough gravel road, up to 15,000 feet elevation), I have been giving a bit more thought to spares! What do you do use with a truck like a Fuso FG or an Isuzu NPR? Do you normally carry two separate spares or trust that you can get to a tire place if one of the back duals goes flat?

I'm planning on getting a NPR, which uses 215 85R 16, and will be using it on and off road (to the limits of 2-wheel drive), mostly in N. America but possibly in Central as well, and am wondering what if a good recommended tire, ie brands, size and style (how aggressive of a tread)? I use Toyo ATs here in Peru, don't remember the model, or size, but am not too impressed with the tread wear. Of course the roads here are really bad, lots of rocks.

Thanks, Vic

 

[VicHanson]

I have never owned a truck with dual wheels and had thought the front wheels were different than the back ones. I was just looking at photos of Carl Hunter's camper and realized that I probably made a wrong assumption. Are all the wheels the same?

Thanks,
Vic

 

[HINO SG]

Pretty sure that although front and rear tires may have a different tread, sizes and specification will be the same practically all the time. All 6 wheels are also interchangeable.

Flats with new tires in regular driving are pretty rare in my experience; in 5 years and many hundreds of thousands of miles I've never had an actual puncture in a medium duty truck.
Unimproved roads, etc, is a different story. Other people here will have far more experience in that matter.

 

[FusoFG]

all the tires and wheels are the same size.

I carry one spare and I've used the stock yokohamas and michlin xcl.

The biggest problem with a flat is changing the tire. It takes correctly torqued lug nuts and a 5 foot breaker bar. See the thread in the fuso section about tight lug nuts.

I've had 2 flats in 15 years with 2 fuso fg's over 150,000 miles and they were before I learned to loosen the lug nuts and hand tighten them after the tire shop over tightened them with a 1" gun.

They were both back tires, one inside and one outside. I could get some but not all of the lug nuts off with my breaker bar.

I ended up driving to a tire shop for changing.

Driving with the outside tire flat seemed a little twitchy especially on off camber stuff. And it helps that my trucks have always been under gvw by 2-4000 lbs so one tire could carry the load. (if one tire will be overloaded slow way down until you change the flat because it's heat caused by the tire flexing that causes tire failure)

I think one of the advantages of dual wheels is having backup in cases of a flat.

Now I hand tighten the lug nuts so I know I can loosen them if I get a flat and I put 2 new tires on the front every 12,000 miles instead of buying 6 tires every 36,000 miles and driving the last 3-6000 miles with nearly worn out tires in all positions.

 

[ntsqd]

[drift]

snip......

Now I hand tighten the lug nuts so I know I can loosen them if I get a flat ......

This is a key point that most folks seem to overlook. I think I'll start a thread on this.[/drift]

 

[VicHanson]

Thanks for the information, always glad to learn something new here.