Our grand tour of southern Spain February 17th Day Thirty-six

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Friday 17^th February Day Thirty five

What motorhome tyre checks should you do regularly?

Is the RAC breakdown European cover worth it? Is the RAC any good?

Our last day in France and we are heading for the Caen coastline and another camping car Aire ten minutes’ drive from the ferry terminal.

As we approach the roundabout to the LeClerc in Saumur (Maggie wants to stock up on wine before we leave France), the bump-bump starts again and suddenly the yellow tyre pressure warning light flashes on the dash. We pull into the garage to fill up and there…..the shock of our lives. A ½” diameter bolt is stuck in the front passenger tyre. It has clearly passed through and we have a slow puncture. With little space on the garage forecourt, we pull around in to the larger supermarket carpark and call the RAC – European Breakdown number.

Is the RAC breakdown European cover worth it? Is the RAC any good?

Well, yes, it is in our humble opinion. We phoned them at 0920. The recovery man arrived at 10.11 and we were moving again at 10.25. One hour from first phone call to on the road again?

So, the answer? Yes, yes, yes! What a brilliant service from the RAC and the recovery man.

The RAC lady took our details and used google maps to pinpoint our exact location. Efficient, reassuring, calming. No nonsense and both texts and a follow up call to make sure everything was working out OK. 

The recovery man was a hero. When he arrived, he looked at the tyre, he lost all pallor to his face and his eyebrows almost came off his forehead as we explained via google translate that we were about to pull onto the motorway to get to Caen. I think the state of the tyre and our ‘lucky escape’ shocked him.

Getting the front tyre off was the easy bit; getting the spare tyre from underneath the motorhome rear – a little trickier as the retaining cable bit attached to the air inlet valve had jammed. A pair of pliers sorted it though. And a little bit of brute force!

Bryony was jacked up, old tyre off, new tyre on in just six minutes! Cheerful service and just a signature required at the end.

We haven’t put the old tyre back underneath. The retaining cable fitting needs checking, so we sit here with a hulking big wheel between the front seats. All the cables below have been tied up and held in place with some zip ties that I always carry onboard.

The rest of the journey is proving uneventful. We have pulled into two service stops to get coffee and also to check the wheel nuts as he put them on and tightened them up by hand and not compressed air gun. The tyre pressure symbol came back on again and we discovered he’d only put air pressure up to 4 bars so we used the little air pump compressor kit we carry on board to top it up to the required 5 bars and the warning light went out.

We stopped at LeClerc at Caen so Maggie could get her wine and now we sit on the camping car site at Lion sur Mer on the Normandy coast. Ten spaces, level gravel pitches with 6-amp EHU. Tight spaces though – we could only just reverse into an available space – and we ate 7.8m long with the tow bar mounted bike racks. This is not the place for anything 8m+.

100m stroll to the fine golden sandy beaches which stretch way into the distance either side. Not much in the town, a few shops and a few seafront cafes and that’s it but a good secure stop for the ferry terminal.

We are working around the bags or wine and the rather large bulky wheel onboard. Every movement requires some strategic thinking! But its only for tonight and then the drive back home from Portsmouth tomorrow. We’ll survive. Meanwhile I have a trip on Monday to our local ProTyres who fitted all the new tyres on Bryony when we up-plated her a year and a half ago. They won’t have a Michelin Agilis Camper 3, 225/70/r15 112 CP tyre in stock but they can see whether they can repair the one with the bolt in. My thinking is probably not!

Ho hum - £112 plus fitting! Ouch! But better this than a blow out at 60 mph on a French autoroute. That could have been moho-rollingly expensive and Bryony a possible write off; not to even contemplate the possible consequences for us both!

The moral of this tale? Always check your tyres carefully – especially if you have been doing consecutive days long distance travelling. Check their pressure, side wall and most importantly tread – especially the bottom bits you can’t see when at rest!! Trust your sensors! Carry zip ties, duct tape and a 12v plug in air compressor pump. Go with a reputable, proven, breakdown recovery service with a good track record in European assistance. 

Today could have been a disaster! We are thankfully unharmed, unscathed and somewhat relieved!

Motorhomes are more often than not driven at close to their maximum weight on every journey which places high demands on the vehicle’s tyres.

Postscript: (back in the UK, our local ProTyres were able to repair the tyre. A new plug and special seal and swapping the spare wheel for the repaired wheel and putting the spare back into its under the chassis position for us – how much? Go on – have a guess?

£20. Yep read that again - £20 with great customer service for the tyre fitting team.

So, what motorhome tyre checks should you regularly do? Here are our tips:

TyreSafe, a well-regarded internet site,  argue you should regularly check your tyres to ensure they are in roadworthy condition and recommend you check them once a month to ensure their overall condition hasn’t changed. Particular care should be taken to carry out a thorough and regular visual inspection.

·        Look for signs of damage – lumps, bumps, cuts, cracking on sidewalls and carcass deformation

·        Look for objects caught in the tread pattern and remove them with a blunt tool

·        Always do the checks if you have run over a big pothole, through road debris, or across a coarse gravel track/car park

·        Check tyre pressures as they deflate slowly over time – your handbook or the door pillar sticker will tell you what pressures should be – ours are 5 bar at front and 5.5 bar at rear. If you can’t access those pressures from the manufacturer, TyreSafe.org has a tyre pressure look-up calculator for motorhomes under the ‘Check Your Pressures’ section on the website - accessible from mobile devices. It is essential to the safety and stability of the motorhome that all tyres are correctly inflated as incorrect tyre pressures can adversely affect the handling and also cause dangerous tyre failure. Check your pressures before any journey when the tyres are still cold and never reduce pressures when the tyres are warm, as they could be too low when they cool down. After pressure checking ensure the valve is not leaking and that a valve cap is fitted. 

·        Throughout Europe you must have a minimum tread depth of 1.6mm across the full tread; some countries will require you to fit winter tyres in certain months with a minimum tread of 3 or 4 mm (or carry snow chains and/or snow socks)

·        If your motorhome is standing for a long time – it may be wise to cover the tyres with covers to shield them from direct sunlight. We haven’t thus far but are considering it; some people on our storage site actually jack up their motorhomes to take the weight off their tyres

·        In the UK it isn’t a legal requirement to carry a spare wheel but it is wise to do so. We check ours for pressure and condition when we check the other ones – especially important as it is carried underneath the motorhome floor and is exposed to road debris etc. Its pressure is 5.5 bar so it can be used on the rear if necessary. We always call out RAC recovery to do our wheel changes and as you read above, we did this in Spain. This was on the recommendation of our local Protyre technicians who changed all our tyres when we up-plated Bryony. They struggled to get the spare wheel un-attached from its base plate below And, there was also the complicated ‘wind up’ cable mechanism to contend with.  They rapidly came to the conclusion that if we were on the side of a busy road trying to jack up the motorhome to free the spare wheel, it would be overly dangerous. Their advice – call the professionals to get it done quickly and more safely.

·        The UK tyre industry recommends that the maximum load on an axle should not exceed 90% of the tyre load capacity as indicated by the tyre’s load index and that changes in tyre size or type should not be undertaken without seeking advice from the motorhome or tyre manufacturers, as the effect on motorhome handling, safety and clearances must be taken into account. It is essential that tyres of the correct specification be fitted and it’s advisable to have the same construction of tyres on all wheels. Only tyres of equal size and service description (Load Index/Speed Symbol) and identical wheels should be fitted across an axle and carried as a spare. Tyre pressures across an axle should be equal. Tyres originally fitted to motorhomes are usually of a Light Commercial (“C” or “CP”) type. CP-type tyres are now widely used as they have been designed to cater for the higher loads imposed by motorhomes, especially when fitted in a single formation on the rear axle. Never replace the tyres with ones of a lower speed rating or load capacity.

What should you do if you do have a motorhome tyre blow out?

Front tyre blow-out? 

·        First, stay calm

·        Keep a firm grip on the steering wheel and attempt to keep the motorhome going in a straight stable line. Counterintuitively, keep your foot on the accelerator at first to maintain speed. Michelin research shows that accelerating allows the forward force of the motorhome to better overcome the sideways force. You’ll have to make a lot of steering corrections to maintain control—you’ll really wrestle with the wheel.

·        Try to avoid hitting the brakes too hard as this can cause the motorhome to swerve to one side as the blown tyre can exaggerate the pull in one direction.

·        Once you’ve regained control, lose speed slowly by removing foot from accelerator and move across any lanes onto a hard shoulder.

·        Turn on emergency warning lights

Should a rear tyre blow, the motorhome will tend to weave across the road

·        Again, let it slow down naturally if possible.

·        You can use the brakes in the event of a rear wheel blow out, as this puts more weight onto the front tyres, taking pressure off the rear.

What to do after a blow out:

·        If you have made it to the hard shoulder , put on your hazard warning lights, put on your Hi-viz vest and then exit the motorhome from the ‘safe’ side and get behind any crash barrier.

·        Put a warning triangle out 80 metres back from your vehicle and have someone act as look out along the road, from behind the safety crash barrier

·        call your breakdown service

Some other tips:

·        drive at around 55 – 60 mph – it will be easier to react to a blow out at these speeds.

·        Keep a longer distance between you and the vehicles in front - it gives you space to accelerate into in the event of a blowout.

 

How to avoid having a blowout in the first place: do the checks already mentioned above, and

 

·        Don’t skimp on your tyres – buy quality ones – check reviews for any brand and model you are considering

·        Look at ply ratings and load indexes; make sure your tyres are appropriately rated for your motorhome type and weight fully laden

·        Check tyre pressures are correct before each trip. Driving in higher altitudes may require extra air, since the pressure in each tyre will drop as you climb higher.

·        Make sure our tyres are correctly balanced

·        Take your motorhome out for a spin once a month if you are parked somewhere long-term. This will keep flat spots from developing when it is parked long-term.

·        Avoid excessive heat to your tyres – such heat is caused by driving at high speed, excessive cornering and frequent braking. (Heat weakens the rubber in your tyres and causes them to expand.)  Take frequent breaks in hot temperatures (as experienced in Spain, for example) or on long travel days to give your motorhome tyres a break.

·        Learn from our mistake - Items such as nails, screws, or debris on the road, can damage tyres! Take care driving past construction areas; be really cautious on dirt/gravel roads! Do quick inspections every time you stop for fuel or a break – ESPECIALLY if you have been on gravel tracks! The number of stones we have to keep digging out of between the treads!

We found this website was quite informative about motorhome tyres in general

https://www.michelin.co.uk/auto/advice/van/motorhome-tyres#:~:text=Motorhome%20tyres%20with%20a%20CP%20marking%20are%20designed%20to%20run,load%20characteristics%20of%20large%20Motorhomes.

Useful information:

Route: A85 – A11 – A28 – A88 – N158 – F514

Distance: 197 miles

Costs: fuel – 112 euros; campsite – 14 euros.

Campsite:  https://www.searchforsites.co.uk/marker.php?id=38817