Well, my fifth blowout turned out to be from a tiny puncture hole found by
one of Bridgestones top tire men here in southern Calif.  Three other
experts were all looking at the damaged side and not the other side where a
tiny hole was found. There were scuff marks on the other dual tire proving
that an object got between the tires and punctured one (with 1090 miles on
it) and let the air out slowly.  Now I am starting to believe it is just my
luck to have five tires blow out in 48,000 miles at the same location on the
RV!! I have been trying to solve this for 47,000 miles to no avail. Once
again, Ford would not help because Fleetwood put the body on their chassis.
Fleetwood, after advising me to take it to their award winning distributor
here for evaluation, told them not to touch it because it was out of
warrantee. And, after finding the elusive tire puncture, the Bridgestone man
would not even come to see the RV because he did not want to get involved.
Now, again, I hope to get help here.

Briefly, after blowing out three of the outer passenger side 225/75 tires on
my 1999 Tioga 31SL I changed to 235/85 type E tires. There was ample room
for these and the speedo gear was changed to indicate right. I done this
hopefully to have safer tires than the minimum 225s Firestones put on by
Fleetwood. Admittedly, I probably was overloaded at times with the 225s as
EVERYONE always are but I made it a point to be well below max weight with
the 235s. But I still blew out two but the last one was not a blowout. I
still believe that the puncture was possible because the tire was very hard
due to increased air pressure (89+ lbs) and the hole was two inches above
the road surface. Something got wedged in the bulge area of the tires at the
road surface and done this in one rev and was thrown away.  But 5 tires at
the same place!!!

Everything the group mentioned before has been done or checked. That side
weighs 140 lbs more than the driver side because of the coach batteries.
(Wonder why Fleetwood moved these batteries up front on later models? And
changed to Michelin 225/75 tires? And made the rear wheel wells a little
larger?) I am not overloaded and drive in the low 60s and on state highways
mostly and not in hot weather. All tires were under two years old and at 78
lbs cold. Stronger shocks are on the coach to reduce side swaying.  Brakes
are excellent and the bearings do not over heat. The tail pipe is far enough
from the rear tires. But something is causing the passenger side to increase
in air pressure. I measured every 50 miles on Highway 10 and had 82 on the
driver side and 89 on the passenger side after 150 miles!! Then 20 miles
later I had the flat.

I do not want to go back down to the 225/75 tires (Michelin of course).
Makes me sick to think that RV manufactures think so little of their
customers' safety to put minimum load tires on an $80,000 RV. Even with the
good Michelin tires I would be 20 lbs below the tire max wt on the passenger
side and 160 lbs on the driver side. If I had a dog with us and he went to
look out the rear pass side window, the tires would be overloaded!! I plan
to stay with the 235/85 tires but not to take advantage of the extra load I
could carry. These four rear tires weigh 20 lbs more but will support 1412
lbs more, not the 180 lbs more that the Michelin 225 will support. They will
not have the bulge near the road surface and I could run them at a little
lower air pressure for a smoother ride. If I run at 75 lbs and even if the
pressure rises 10 lbs I would not have the results I was having before. Did
I mention my increased mpg with the higher fuel prices these days? With
these tires I have picked up 2 mpg and that helps. I may be the only one
around whos RV lives up to the lies told by some salesmen that we could get
9-10 mpg (I was told this). I have gotten 9.2 so far and could do even
better on short trips. So I hope this will solve the problem without ever
knowing the cause of the problem and we can go on our trips without
wondering when the tire will blow or wearing my jack out. Has anyone ever
heard of anything like this?