I picked up a nice used trailer tire to replace one of my dry-rotted ones that I was using for a spare. It looked better than one that I had on the trailer so I swapped them out. I was greasing my bearings today and noticed that that tire I just got is a radial while all the others are not. Anybody think this will hurt anything?

 

No if it was a dually yes cause it would put all the weight on the bias ply tire

 

Thanks...

 

i have a tandem axle utility trailer with one radial, no problems for 2 years

 

I decided to just use it as a spare. I have two new American made tires on one side of the trailer and two mismatched Chinese tires on the other. I'm just gonna use those two as spares and get two more of the same tires that I have on the other side...

 

They say as long as you have 2 bias ply on the same axe its okay, and the same with radials, but you should not have 1 bias and 1 radial on the same axle, friend of mine that own`s a tire shop told me that.

 

On a trailer, you will never know the difference with a mixed set of tires, so long as a radial is not beside a bias on a DRW set-up; as already stated, the BIAS is a lot stronger/stouter casing and the radial is soft and squishy, thus the BIAS would end up doing all the work.


For what it is worth, 99% of trailers will fare best with good old BIAS tires.

One reason among many is that radials do not fare well when sitting un-used for days at a time.

The sitting does something to the structure and the steel belts will soon deform and the tire get all twisted and distorted, commonly referred to as a "broken belt".

 

I have a 20" utility trailer with mixed types of tires. I have driven in it heavily loaded for many thousand miles..........no problems. It began when radials were all I could find on a Sunday and I was on the road trying to get home.