Top-5 tyre-saving tricks

Some tips on how to make your van’s tyres last the distance

One of the most neglected parts of a caravan is its tyres. Most of us can be fooled into thinking of them like car tyres – unfortunately, that’s wrong.

The reason is that caravan tyres tend to do a lot less work than car tyres. To have a caravan’s tyres getting down to the tread bars (those small ridges across the hollows of one section of the tread to indicate only 3mm of tread is remaining) would need a serious amount of touring kilometres.

They don’t wear as quickly because they don’t turn as much as a car’s front wheels do and they also don’t have to put power down to the ground like a car. Caravans also don’t generally do as many kilometres as car tyres do in any given year, and also spend a lot of time sitting around at home between tours.

Here are our top five tips to getting the most out of your van’s tyres…

Buy fresh

This is the crucial part of understanding how caravan tyres work – every tyre has a ‘shelf life’, meaning that they only have a set period of time in which they are safe to use.

You can have tyres with heaps of tread on them but they can still be throw-aways. Here’s why: rubber degrades over time and a key element of this process is when rubber hardens and begins to crack.

There are two consequences of this, and both are pretty nasty. Firstly, the tyres will have less grip, particularly in the wet, where for some old tyres it’ll feel like you’re driving on ice. For some, it’ll be less obvious, for example, electric caravan brakes that never used to lock up once you’d set them up will start to do so, particularly when the road’s wet.

The other consequence is that tyres get hot and need to expand. If there’s no flexibility left in the carcass, they’ll simply rip open. Not what you need while driving along the highway.

When buying new tyres, make sure they’re as fresh as possible. The tyre’s manufactured date will be stamped on the sidewall as a four-digit code. For example, ‘5016’ means that the tyre was made in the 50th week of 2016. Tyre manufacturers say that once a tyre reaches its fifth birthday, it’s on borrowed time.

If you follow the rest of the tips here you might get a few more years out of your tyres, but you’ll have to inspect them often for signs of deterioration.

Watch your pressure

Aside from keeping your tyres much past their replacement date, the worst thing you can do for tyre life is not keep the pressures at the correct level.

There will be a tyre pressure noted on the placard on most newer vans, so use that as your baseline and inflate to this pressure only when tyres are cold.

To make sure that the pressures are right for your van and its unique load, do the 4psi check. That is, after a good highway run of at least 50km, see what the hot tyre pressure is.

If it’s 4psi higher (for passenger-rated tyres, or 5-6psi for light truck tyres) then your cold pressure is spot-on. If the pressure increase is less, then your cold pressure is too high; conversely, if the pressure increase is more, your cold pressure is too low.

You can tweak the pressure when on tour until you see the right increase from cold to hot.

Cover them up

When your van is parked up, to make your tyres last a bit longer you need to keep the sun’s rays off them.

UV rays increase rubber deterioration and so while just sitting there the tyres are wearing out more rapidly than if you covered them. What happens with UV exposure is that the tyres will start to crack and delaminate more quickly, which leads to – eventually – one nasty blow-out.

Even if you park your van under a carport, guaranteed at least one side of the van will be lit up with UV for at least part of the day. It’s as easy as covering the tyres with a small tarp or carpet offcut.

Take the weight off

Tyres don’t like sitting for long periods with a lot of weight on them.

While this applies more to high-performance tyres, a caravan tyre will also be affected if left for long enough. What happens is that when you park the van and the rubber is still hot from driving, it’ll hold the flattened shape of being pressed against the ground as it cools. When you start towing the van again, the tyre will maintain the ‘flat spot’ and so ride quality will deteriorate.

Even if you don’t notice it much up front in the tow vehicle, your van and all its less rigid components will. It’ll be like driving on a rough dirt road even on a smooth highway.

Sometimes the tyre will regain its original shape but to avoid the problem altogether jack up the wheels when parked so they’re off the ground. If you’ve got the time and inclination, take the wheels off and store them in a darkened part of the garage, which will save them from UV exposure and make your caravan a lot less appealing to thieves.

Avoid sharp U-turns

We’ve all done it – getting into a situation where we need to turn the rig around in a tight space, but if you have a tandem van and can keep going then make a wider turn, then do it.

This is because with tandems there will be two tyres of the four that will be dragged across the ground as you turn, adding to tyre wear (have a look at the road surface after you’ve done such a turn – you will leave rubber behind).

If you do such a turn on gravel – even if the tyres are just dragged on the side of a paved road – the sidewall is exposed to sharp stones and therefore more vulnerable to cuts and in the worst case a puncture.

Top-5 tyre-saving tricks

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