Cruiser Model R-28BHSS

[FastEagle]

Here is some feedback from my trip to the Greenville, SC RV show.

Because I'm a RV trailer tire researcher I paid particular attention to tire/rim fitments on the Cruiser trailers at the show. I also study certification labels for weight correctness and tire fitments to those weights.

All of the cruiser models I looked at had Special Trailer (ST) tires manufactured by West Lake who comes under the Vulcan Tire umbrella. I couldn't find any tire warranty information in any of the owner's manual packages. However, Vulcan says there is a West Lake manufacturer's warranty. More importantly, Vulcan in-house warranty includes road hazards.

In this first post I'm just going to address the certification information in the reference below.

http://www.irv2.com/photopost/showfull.php?photo=27421

For me, one of the things that stood right out was the spare is identified as a Bias ply tire and the primary tires are Radials. All the models I looked at did in fact have Bias spare tires. Not a big deal because, after all, it's just a spare. You would not want to ride on it very long before replacing it with a radial because it's tread design and internal structure is much different from the highly regarded radials. The Bias tire has stiffer sidewalls and the tread design looks a little like all terrain tires. Oh, none of the spares I looked at were protected from the elements. And, the sales person said the bias spare was used to save end item costs.

According to the certification label Cruiser RV has not provided very much load capacity reserves with their tire fitment. It's actually just 20 lbs per tire for the loaded trailer. RV trailers hardly ever carry balanced loads so the possibility of having a tire or two over loaded is very high.

Down in that tire size it's often very hard to upgrade the tires without having to change rims. There are good options in the 14" size. The Kuhmo 195R14 LRD trailer tire with its European design is almost the same size as the OE Westlake tires and it has 2094# of load capacity at 65 PSI. A much needed increase to get the tire spook out of your rear view mirror.

FastEagle

p.s. Looks like Thor has purchased Cruiser RV and will put it under the Heartland umbrella.

[Travels with Yoly]

Also from my previous post ....

If you have 14 inch wheels, Khumo makes an LT 857 radial just for trailer application. I think Tire Rack.com's description for them is .....
C205R-14 Khumo Radial 857 Trailer use only D

This is a D rated tire (over most of the other C rated Chinese tires). It has 8 plys instead of the stock tire 4 ply. It raises the load rating from a standard 1760 lbs to nearly 2200 lbs per tire at 65 psi max.