[Greg]

Soap and water. If you really want to protect them from the effects of aging, drive the bus a lot.

If you want to look pretty, but possibly harm your tires use tire dressing.

Here’s a question for Camping World tire cover buyers: If covering the tires with some kind of cloth or canvas cover prevents effects of aging due to sun, why to the inner drive tires age also, even though they never get sun exposure?

[George]

I’ve been using Opti Bond Tire Gel, it’s water based and last for a long time. It also has Uv protectants in it.

[John]

I use 303 tire protectant

[Robert]

I greatly appreciate the information. Jon, could it be ozone that effects the inner tires? I developed tire coves using heavy sun shade material. Plus they don cover the tires like those cumbersome white or black ones do. But if it is ozone or Uv ,then I may be adding extra work.

[Liam]

Michelin has an excellent manual specific to tires for commercial use. It is almost 300 pages long and it covers 100% of what is needed to know.

It makes two points strongly. The first is they only suggest mild soap and water to be used on tires. If there was a good protectant or tire dressing you can bet the farm Michelin would be selling that to people that want pretty tires under their brand name. They have millions of tires on cars, trucks and buses and could add a lot of money to their bottom line by selling that.

I had BFGoodrich de-icing boots on my plane and BFG sold protectants that extended the life of the boots as well as making them look nice and shiny. The same could be done for tires, but nobody that makes tires that I know of sells anything so despite claims to the contrary my gut tells me soap and water is the limit for tires.

As to tire covers, I am certain it makes people that use them feel good. But the best thing to do is use the tires because driving on them releases the compounds that resist the effects of aging. But if you cannot drive regularly the next best thing is to treat the tires as they are in storage in a tire warehouse. Get the weight off the tires by supporting the chassis and dumping the air in the level low system. That will not resist cracking, but it will minimize flat spotting.

Read the Michelin book. It is incredible.

[DON]

On another Prevost orientated venue, one of the guys posted that the tires should be parked on “pads” even if the coach is parked on concrete. He argued that expensive corporate aircraft are parked on special pads even when in hangars on fancy coated concrete. Apparently the “pads” are better for the tires than concrete.

Anyone have experience with putting tires on special pads?

[Greg]

Those shops with finished floors do that to prevent the tires from marking the floor. It is not to protect the tires.

The tires leave dark residue, check your garage floor where you park your car and you will see what I am talking about.

[Jon]

1998 Royale … that’s what I was thinking!