New tires or Recaps?

If you can generate your own casings I would say caps would be fine. If your going to buy caps with unknown casings I would not run them. I've had terrible luck running caps on my trailer with "mystery" casings. They tear up mud flaps when they blow and cause downtime. I run Yokohama trailers tires now and on the trailer I just sold with ZERO problems and they are about $350 a piece. I personally feel that the money I'd save on caps would be spent in time and damage and earlier wear out down the road.

 

I will only put new tires on my equipment. Michelin on the truck and Goodyear G316 on the trailer. The part about having to deal with blowouts more often from recaps, or uneven wear patterns, etc, is more of a headache to me than the higher price of buying new.

 

The only recaps I ever had blow out were poorly maintained, heavily abused and many times questionable casings on a big company's own trailers. They had over 300 trailers. And it was at least a monthly thing to have a trailer tire blow out on one of their trailers. In 2 years of live loading on MY one trailer I've never had one blow out. It could happen tomorrow. You can unwittingly run over stuff. But I do try to avoid it. All comes down to taking care of what you have. I figure 2 years is pretty good. If one pops tomorrow I'll be ticked but i got a spare and am happy for the 2 trouble free years.

 

These last ones i just replaced lasted 2 years.Now i send them in and pay around 180.00 to get fresh recaps..I do ''take care'' of my tires...Thats why i was pissed at the NY COPPER for ticketing me for low air pressure...

You are right.It's all in bending over and working hard at maintaining what you have....I don't see many drivers bending over to check the tires..?

 

They probably bend over for other things but not to take care of their trucks LOL

 

...It seems to be the new trend for the newer people...Bend Over Boy...

 

Ok rookie question. Recaps are not allowed on roads in CA right? That's what I was told.

 

I have run caps in the past and never had any problems with them. My present ride has all virgin, but it came from the factory that way. When I need to do drives, will probably go with caps again. One thing I learned early on, was have the capped tire spun up on the balancer after mounting on rim and see how much it is out of balance and even if it has nice roundness while spinning. I have come across caps that looked like the shape of an egg when they were spun up. If they pass this simple test and do not have an excessive amount of out of balance, I then throw in something like Counteract balancing beads in the tire, air back up, and mount it on the truck. I have not ever had a tire fall apart or blow when cared for after that and kept inflated properly.

Yes, Caps are allowed in CA.

 

Your right my mistake. My contract (lease) says I cant have recaps. need new tires. What am I looking at. Price ?

 

Interesting that a lease contract would dictate virgin tires only. Not sure of any real valid reasoning behind that micro managing of lease vehicles. Next, they will dictate the brand of oil you can use in the engine.