New tires or Recaps?

I had 4 caps on trailer and only one survived. The rest was blown up in a few months forcing me to spend extra $$. No more caps for me, though I have heard many success stories bout them.

 

The thing that gives recapped tires a bad name is truckstops, railvans and container chassis. Truckstops don't care as long as it has thread on it and the other two go the cheapest possible route. I actually had a tire place tell me as long as the tire holds air they will send it out to be capped for the rail trailer/chassis.

I've hauled heavy for years with caps. My permits allowed me 52k on the spread alone. Now anyone who has ever pulled a spread knows how much they can tear up tires with just 40k on it imagine with 52k+... I've blown a few, it happens. But virgin tires blow also and sometimes do more damage.

It all evolves around who does the work and how much effort they put into it. I dealt with a guy who was very anal about casings, when he left their recapping quality went down hill and I started running virgins again until I find someone I'm comfortable with.

 

Another thing with caps is they do much better if they can sit and cure for a month or two before you run them. Also, I'd put the shallower trailer caps on anytime of the year, but tried to only put anything with a deep tread on in the late fall or winter. Two advantages: They had less tread left and therefore ran cooler time summer rolled around, and they'd had a lot of heat cycles to ensure a proper cure.

And only my casings! If you're taking their casings, learn to read the date on the tire so you're not running a casing that's 10 years old!

 

What it comes down to is this, those that have experience with caps that is favorable, they will support the use of caps. Those that have had an issue at one time, will never be swayed that caps are any good. I took my last set of capped drive tires to almost 400,000 miles and probably would have gone further as there was still plenty of tread left, but I sold the truck. Those were Michelin Custom Mold retreads. I have blown 3 tires in the last 20 years, and 2 were virgin, one was a cap. Looking at it over a longer spread of time, I have had roughly the same level of dependability from virgins and caps. Not a definitive analysis, but as far as actual blowouts go, it was a wash as to which was worse. Seemed about the same risk either way. I will give in to the possibility that a virgin tire, under the exact same conditions, might actually go a tad further before needing replaced. But when the tread style and design is the same, and the casing is the same, I have not seen any definitive difference in longevity. If I have a Michelin XDA virgin tire, and compared to a Michelin casing with a XDA recap tread, I have yet to see any appreciable difference in longevity.

 

That is why Michelin caps are going on my well maintained drive casings. Like you say Cowpie guys either believe in caps or they don't and nothing that can be said will change views. A buddy of mine thinks I'm crazy and says I'll regret it. We'll just have to see. I asked him if he would change his mind if I managed to get 250-300k trouble free, and he said nope. Now to me that is crazy but it ain't my money.

 

A long time ago I tried capping my own casings with disastrous results. On the trailer one came apart and destroyed 2 cross members, tore off a mudflap, destroyed 3 tail lights and part of the ICC bumper, on the drive another one ripped apart the side fairing on my FLD.
Those two instances resulted in missed appointments, road calls, having to buy "something close" to match and ultimately cost me two extra days on the road.

My last set of virgin Michelins cost me $0.0094/ mile for 425,000 trouble free miles.
I'm done "saving" money on tires.

 

Well, there must be a lot of folks having some decent results with recaps, considering the amount of casings getting capped across the country. I know that Allied Tire in Omaha, their Michelin recap facility is running full bore 24 hrs a day trying to keep up. And when one considers the number of caps actually being made vs. the amount of rubber actually laying on the road, it is a very low percentage of recaps that are failing. I still think it is a wash. Caps and virgins are failing are roughly the same rate. And the vast majority that do, are due to poor maintenance, balancing, and air pressures, overloading, and excessive speed for the tire rating. Probably why those of us that have no real problems with caps do not have all the failures that others seem to experience.

 

I haven't seen them very often, but has anyone use the goodyear uni-circle recaps?

 

That's what are on my trailer front tandem axle G316 they wear good and I've had no problems with them.

 

Would you mind to share where I can buy 10 virgin tires for $3777 nowadays? ? ? And get 361k from cheep tires???