A new problem showed up with the trailer on the way back from Grafham, a really bad vibration started about half way home, thought the trailer was going to shake itself to pieces. So we pulled over on the hard shoulder and took a look, nothing doing, no problem with bearings we could see.
We proceeded, slowly, to Stafford services, and stopped to have a proper look; we took a wee while to notice but just on the inside of the tyre we could see the tyre had become deformed. With the wheel off and it looked really bad, the spare was fitted and home we went.
I took the wheel to our local tyre and towing centre, David Greenbank in Kendal, our man said “ah the tyre is out of date, they only have a life of 5 years this is. 2001 tyre”.
Apparently the tyres perish, water gets in and the steel radial bands deform; “been launching your boat in salt water” our man said, “might have” I said looking sheepish! “Oh that makes it much worse” he said. Any way we could have had a blow out!
Moral of the tale, change your tyres every 5 years even if they have tread on, and you can check the date by reading the code on the side.
Keith Jamieson
The Flying Fifteen Blog 