Retreads.......What's your take/experience.....

I call them may pops

 

I'm done with them forever. When you look at the life expentancy of a recap vs. a virgin compared to price it is a small savings.

But I think about sitting by the side of the road, missing an appointment. That could cost me more than two tires right there ! Let alone some fool tailgating me when a retread comes flying off. Retread math is save a little today, pay a bunch later.

 

seen more virgin blown on the road than recaps.


It comes back to tire maintenance and whether or not the steering wheel nut is actually checking pressures and tires.

 

i use retreads, they last about a year

when you get them, look them over, look at the DOT date on the side of the tire, anything more than one year is too old (in my book)

some retreads are put on tires up to ten years old

keep them properly inflated and you should have no problem

 

With keeping an eye on tire pressures and such, recaps do just fine. I have used them in very hot weather pulling gross loads and have never had a problem. I follow the OEM recommended inflation pressures for the original tire casings. I have primarily used the Michelin Custom Mold recaps, and got respectable tire life almost as good as with virgin.

 

I've had great experience running Bandag FuelTech caps. They are very picky about the casings they accept. But I watch the tire pressures and run under 65 all the time. It seems wasteful to run virgin tires when a recap does the same job with similar life for so much less.

 

I've got 1.5 million miles under my belt and have yet to blow a virgin tire.

If you're talking overloaded or not knowing how to use a tire gauge that's a different discussion. If you're talking this Chinese crap or cheap tires, then you deserve what you get. But the problems I hear about with those tires is usually uneven wear, poor fuel mileage, etc... not blowing out.

I have caps on my drives right now. "A" casings, Michelin and Goodyear. I'm not scared of them, I'm not taking them off, but after I get my money out of them virgins are going on, probably Bridgestones. Even the tire manufacturers only claim 80-85% life retread vs. virgin.

 

I would chalk it up to piss poor maintenance than anything. I don't care if you use cheap chinese, recaps, virgins or what brand. Don't maintain pressures, poor vehicle maintenance etc, they will chew up and spit out your tires without a care in the world.

I have been told that running drive recaps on even Michelin XZA steers results in a higher rolling resistant tire (lower number) compared to a virgin Bridgestone 726EL. Entirely possible. I run Bridgestone, goodyear recaps on my front trailer axle. Mostly double coin recaps on my rear trailer axle. I honestly don't see much difference in wear on either axle.

Other than the one dual where I had noticeable difference in tire height. That pair scrubbed the shorter tire off in about 10,000 miles. It got replaced with a bridgestone/firestone recap combo. (same recap as the right side now which is both Goodyear casing)


but don't just blame it on recaps.

 

fair enough, good point about mismatched tires too. I'm not saying they're absolute junk either. One of the carriers I used to run for had a good tire guy who had good communication with his recapper. He would get us matched "A" casings, first time caps at a good price. But even in that situation I would argue that I still don't want to pay $225 for that tire, even if it doesn't blow out I am confident I can get 3 or 4 months extra out of a $400 tire. And that's worth it too me, just to spend less time in the tire shop. And, when I finally do go to the tire shop I can likely get $80/per for my virgin casings back. But that's all just my opinion, obviously retreads are a good option for a lot of people or they wouldn't be so popular.

Some people mentioned Bandag, Bandag doesn't mean anything, there's all kinds of places that make "Bandag" recaps, with varying degrees of quality control. Before I got virgin Firestones on my trailer I had a "new" bandag recap installed roadside, and that "new" bandag recap blew out three days later. And yes I rechecked the air pressure. It was a junk chinese casing, and possibly not adhered correctly. But I had planned on getting 8 new tires when I bought that trailer, I just put it off one week too long I guess. The odd thing was there were two tires I was really keeping a close eye on because the cap was seperating. But it wasn't one of those that blew, it was one of the good looking recaps. I guess the lesson learned there is that when you don't know where the tires come from you're just guessing. They may have pulled good tires off the trailer before I bought it and tossed on a bunch of hodge-podge they had lying around.

 

I will only run my casings! I will only cap them once and then I get rid of them .