Tire-O-Drama

We moved up to an RV Park in Bozeman, but ended up having to deal with motorhome stuff instead of visiting my brother-in-law like I had hoped we would do. The main thing I regret on our trip are the people we've missed - I wish we could do this forever so we could take the time to visit everyone! But since this is the only year we'll have to do this huge of a trip, we do feel a bit of pressure to get places like Alaska before winter so we'll have time to get to all the places we want to see.

Wheels, Tires, Aligment - Oh My!

Background:

First, we developed a shudder at 40 mph - this happened after we replaced our spare and flat (from Baja) in southern California. At first we thought maybe the wheels had been moved around, since we did a tire shuffle to make sure we had matched sets, and maybe the wheel that was out of true had been in the back where we didn't feel it. Now we are starting to suspect that it was the alignment we got in San Dimas. I think it was a really, really bad alignment.

But then again, the wheel ~was~ out of true and couldn't be balanced (we found this out in Grand Junction at the Big O Tire Store). Anyway... in Arizona (Dead Horse Ranch State Park), we noticed there was this black residue on the sides of the RV and we couldn't figure out what it could be... we now think it was tiny shreds of our tires being grated by the road and the really bad alignment... the tires looked fine then, on the outside, and they still do. We got all the left side tires balanced in Grand Junction and found out about the wheel.

Now:

We bought a new wheel in Bozeman, and got it put on - no more shudder! yay! But they pointed out that our front tires were really worn. Upon inspection, they were right - they are badly worn on the insides, indicating a very poor alignment. Maybe they couldn't align the tires properly because of the one being out of true, and maybe it was moved from rear to front, which is why we didn't have the problem before, so maybe it's not particularly anyone's fault, but the combination of these things has eaten up a pretty new (and really damn expensive) pair of 19 inch RV tires.

So now we need new tires and an alignment.

Devin called everywhere and no one seems to do alignments on RVs! Not the Ford Dealer, not the RV service center, not the tire store that replaced the wheel and pointed out our bad tires and need for alignment... Tire-o-Rama in Belgrade could do it, but not until Friday. We've already been here almost two weeks, and would really like to move on, before it gets too late to go to Alaska!

And not only this, but no one in Montana, apparently, sells (or has in stock) the Goodyear RV Tires we want!

Finally we found an alignment shop in Kalispell - still no appointments till Friday, but at least it is near Glacier and we can move on a little closer to Canada.

The reallly funny thing about the tires is Devin was searching on the RV.net forum and found a guy that was having the exact same problem about a month ago - he was in Missoula, and was looking for the exact same tires! He finally settled on Michelins and had them installed in Kalispell, so we may end up doing the same thing.