My vent on the craziness of what dealers will try to sell you. Sit down, get some tea.
So rolling into 2020 and after our wedding. My wife and I went to the RV show in Chantilly, VA for the 3rd year anniversary of meeting there. Our first date was at the RV show in 2018 when I was still recovering from my foot surgery. I had no idea at the time that I was about to meet such an amazing and loving person. In 2020, we included the girls and said let's see what was out there. We had already done a bunch of camping trips in the old RV and knew while it did ok, it was not the most optimal sleeping arrangement for the girls heading into their teen years.
This lead us to falling in love with the GD Solitude 380FL. The front living with two pull out beds, and the bath and a half looked so promising for what we wanted. I think at this point only some of the newer RKs to compete. Anyway, we looked at several brands/setups and the solitude was the nicest for the price. We then went and made the deal....and this leads up to my venting.
General RV had a good price, good financing options, but man are they super high pressure post sales. Trying to sell lots of products from ceramic coating (we bought and would do it again), to extended warranty, and even a tire system call Tyron tire band. Now
Tyron is a run flat safety band for non run flat tires is my interpretation. The product sounds great for big RV steer tires, though after 10 years of RVing an dealing with blowouts, I have never had a trailer blow out cause loss of control of the truck/trailer combination. When penning the deal I declined that product at the RV show. However, several days later I asked to add slide topper awnings and the modified paperwork added these Tyron products and the 2200 dollars in cost to the deal. After many calls going unanswered I finally got the manager and said in no way shape or form do we want this product installed. They took it off the deal and I assumed that was that.
Now the RV came with G rated tires of the Westlake branding. Straight from China and likely inferior to everything else out there produced by other brands. However, after talking to several people they said they consistently got about 3 years out of the tires. So we fast forward to 2022, the westlakes are 3 years old and I was planning to replace them. A bonus is my friend Ken has decided to trade in his Momentum 351 for a Momentum 397ths. This trade in moves him up to 17.5 rims with H rated tires, and he just happens to have 1 year old Saliun G rated tires on the soon to be traded rig. We come up with a plan to swap tires and trade in the RV with my old westlakes on his rig. Not a big deal other then swapping some tires from rim to rim.....so so I thought.
So I get to the shop with some of the rims/tires to swap. I go to remove the first tire off my RV and something is wrong, the bead broke off the rim but I cannot position it to be removed from the rim. Some inspection and we see this steel ring like this one:
View attachment 651778
So I head back home and go through all the stuff that came with the RV. I find a fabric pouch with the Tyron brand on it and instructions. It is a emergency band removal kit and I think great, now I get to figure out how to remove these things permanently from my rims. I setup the kit and and go to work on the first tire, except the issue is that the sidewall of this commercial G rated tire will not compress enough for this tool. After 90 minutes of fighting with it, I finally got to the bolt to undo it the band and we let the band fall in the tire. Then I start to remove the tire and get all the guts of the tire band out of the tire. So one down and 3 to go, well I look at the state of the emergency removal tool and it was severely bent and warped. I attempted another wheel and it was too much for the kit and we could not even get the band exposed. This turned into a 1 hour conversation with Tyron-USA owner that there are no tire shops in the area that service this, and the nearest is my dealership.
So thanks to the dealer adding a not popularly supported product to my wheels. I spent 3 days trying to remove them and now waiting on a replacement emergency kit and have an appointment with a local commercial tire shop. We are hoping to remove the remaining tire bands and I plan to never ever allow them to be reinstalled. I don't care how good of a product it is, when there is no support from the industry, you create a custom unsupportable rim. I am so thankful that I did not learn this on the side of the road with a flat.
So even when the company doesn't charge you for something, you can still end up paying in the end. Thanks for the rant.