running outside duals only

[SeanF]

Moved from the Drivetrains subforum to Conversion Discussion so more eyes will see it.
Hopefully someone with knowledge (or at least a well-stated opinion!) will chime in.

Sean

[bansil]

Why?
save money on 2 tires?

[go00nascar]

if you had just single tires on rear it would slide every time you hit brakes.
also if you look at load rating per tire it would be more than 1/2 of rear rating but because the GVW is with all 6 it would still not pass weight inspection. only way around that is if it has Budd or hub pilot wheels you could put on super singles if money on object .

[bluebird90]

Running the outer dual only is not a good idea. Other than the load bearing reasons, when you do this you put abnormal loads on the bearings. the setup is designed to have the two wheel bearings share the load, when you run just use one wheel, you move the load center outboard of the outer bearing. ( think leverage effect). this also puts a tremendous load on the spindle nuts.
Also think of this, when 2 tires share the load, they wear half as much as one. so your single would wear faster that duals. no savings there.
Think of this too, with duals, you still have one tire holding you up if you blow one. safer. With a single, you blow the tire you're stuck till you fix.

[roach711]

Originally Posted by bluebird90

Think of this too, with duals, you still have one tire holding you up if you blow one. safer. With a single, you blow the tire you're stuck till you fix.

When we picked up our bus it had a flat rear tire. The guy at the bus terminal told us that when his drivers get a flat rear (assuming they even knew it had gone flat) they just drive it in, so we drove it 40 miles home with no problems. I figure when we get a flat front tire I'll just pull one of the rear duallys and pop it onto the front to get us to a repair shop. With duals you always have two spares.

[bapos]

I know this is already been hashed out but some food for thought...

Think of the contact patch a tire makes. Its more or less about the size of your hand. When you take two more tires out of the equation and you have a nice long heavy bus well the traction factor foes our there door.

I have seen semi trucks single up but they were only limping in to the tire shop. When loaded (when is a converted bus ever unloaded?) a semi truck will stress the crap out of a single tire and sometimes ends up messing that tire up.

As I said above the only time to single up is in an EXTREME emergency and nothing more. They put duals on that axle for a reason.