proper inflation?
- Thread starter Plati
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Well, I'm on my third set of LTs on an Expy and that's not my experience. Drove west on I90 all day today .. quiet smooth and a great ride. Road got snow and icy around Toledo was glad for those tires. Expy with great tires 4WD and traction control is one sweet ride in adverse conditions. I'll be testing it in Rockies soon
Not with a good tire.
My Falken Wildpeaks are 10 ply and with the windows up there is zero noticeable noise difference from the factory Goodyear’s. My ride is fantastic and better than stock in my opinion but I did Bilsteins at the same time.
They don't always make it worse ride. Now if you take a load range E Tire inflate them all the way to 80 psi hit will ride firmer and might feel quite bumpy but there's really no reason to go that high if it's not a vehicle that you're loading giant pieces of sheet metal or concrete block or bags of cement into. Anywhere between 50 and 70 pounds should be where you should experiment with this to see where it rides best for you.
I have run a few of the E450 and 550 any buses that had the 225 75 16 load range E Tire on them and when I first put some Cooper Brand Tires on there even though they were load range e they felt like a lot more sidewall Flex than the previous michelins that were on there. It seemed like the steering was sloppy and mushy.
07navi
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My 8000 pound Excursion always ran E rated tires and I ran them at 60 pounds but 50 would have worked. If I jacked them up to 80 I would definitely feel every little bump even though that is where they would have been at their strongest.
I think this discussion relates back to my OP. On my Expy at the current load (weight) if I ran them at 32 , you would see a different contact patch. More gushy. You have to run them higher psi at that load. For much higher loads in order to get that contact patch , you need to run higher psi and tires can handle it. At least that's my theory.
I believe the Excursion is only about 7400 pounds and that's only if it's a diesel . The V10s top out at about 6600 to 6800 but they are still heavy vehicles.
I too, would think that they would ride harder at 80 psi but I have heard a couple of people post to the contrary. One person actually stated that their vehicle Road better at 80 with load range e tires than it did at a lower pressure which I think was around 55.
All of my Excursions have been 36-40 foot stretch limos and weight just under 10k empty. For these, hou can't run the tires at 50psi if you are going to put people in them.
When I first got one of them I would let 62 psi alone but then started going to a min of 72.
Then when I started doing the math I like to stay closer to the max load psi of 80 printed on the tires.
This is one application where the is no big safety margin like a regular passenger car with even standard load tires. Most would be impossible to overload unless you filled them with bags of cement, blocks, or thick iron.
There is also a fairly major difference even in different sizes of load E tires.
I think one had 265 75 16 and another had 235 80 16.
One is about 3085 at 80 but only 2314 at 60 psi.
The 235/80 is about 3520 at 80psi.
That's 1500lbs more for tires that look smaller.
Amazingly tires will take a lot more than rated loads for a long time.
Over 20 years ago I saw standard P tires on many 10 and even 14 pass limos many that were already over 7500lbs empty. Then add 12-14 people and it is amazing the re weren't blow outs but they held up fine. Not a lot of miles on them with those loads but still they had to often be way over the max load.
I also saw 12-14 pass with factory Lincoln air spring susp still in rear that lasted for years until they started leaking but never blew out.
Standard industry practice became to replace with strong coil springs in rear and raise the rear up some too on anything bigger than 8-10 pass 120 inch but I saw several with bags and they lasted well.
Most 120s still had factory air bladder springs.
I had one pop on a run in 2003. Sounded like a shot gun at the right rear tire!
Had to put one person up front and readjust everyone with heaviest people in forward part or rear of limo and smallest people in the far rear and drive slowly low ridering in the rear to get them the last 1.5 mile or so to the corporate lunch place.
Dropped them and ran back to get a different limo.
07navi
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I owned my Ex for 10 years, they weigh 8000 lbs with gas and a passenger and the diesels weigh more, plus most people use 285/75-16 tires but 265 is stock and 80 lbs will definitely make it ride rough no matter what. When those tires blow it is very violent. Mine blew a 6" hole right out the middle of the tread with steel belts hanging out plus it ruined my fender. You need to own one to know about them.
Why are you quoting my above post about owning multiple excursions and then commenting like I don't know about them because I haven't owned one. I've owned far more excursions the most human beings. Unless they own a car lot and sell ford trucks.
They don't weigh a vehicle with a passenger or passengers or whatever stuff you may have stowed in the back. They weigh a vehicle empty without the driver and it's called curb weight. It is including some fuel and fluids in a normal operating condition but I cannot say it is with a full tank of gas. It probably is not. We would have to research that.
Now motorcycles come with two weights a dry weight in a wet weight because they're so concerned about being able to publish the lightest motorcycle wait for performance use. Autos don't do this. There is simply curb weight. Your post reads as if you had a 5.4 or a 6.8 because you said the Diesels way more. Even the Diesels don't weigh a thousand pounds and the V10 weigh less as I said. But for all intents and purposes and rounding around numbers, they are almost 8,000 lb vehicles but they're actually a lot closer to 7500.
Actual specs show 6650-7688 but more often you will see 7230 as the lowest published curb weight number which I believe is more correct. I don't think I've ever seen in Excursion only way 6650 unless you had removed a bunch of parts from it.
It seems the EPA use as curb weight with a full tank of gas what do they call nominal. But as I said not all published numbers include a full tank of fuel. Being 44 gallon tanks that's 350 lb.
I cannot confirm whether Ford publishes their curb weight numbers with a full tank of gas or not.
I would think at least a half tank if not the whole full tank would be included in the numbers but I have no way currently to confirm this.
Regardless, excursions max out just slightly above 7500 lbs and some are much closer to 7000 lb.
There is also the GVWR stamped on the sticker inside the door and Ford Excursion that's about 8,500 lb.
Sometimes people look at this and confuse it for curb weight. A lot of they E Series cutaway chassis buses are at 14,000 something for the total loaded weight but the vehicles themselves weigh about 6000 pounds.
Most if not all came from the factory with load range D Tires not E also.
All of our Excursions have been stretches so they have all been heavier than a non stretched one.
Many are very close to 10,000 pounds but none of them exceed 10,000 empty.
07navi
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So you know about the addict transporters, thats good.
I have no idea what an addict transporter is? A city bus?
07navi
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Half the people nowadays that ride limos are either drunks or drug dealers with their "friends"...…….you know that
Exactly what city or what area are you in?? Very few people actually ride around in limos today.
It does vary greatly and some markets are still busy but most markets are simply a hollow shell of what they used to be.
The majority of people that ride in limos today are part of a wedding party.
We rarely do any 21st birthdays or any birthdays are Bachelor or Bachelorette parties anymore. The party crowd has died off as there's just not enough people with enough money to spend to go out. Weddings are super expensive so the limo ends up being one of the lowest expenses of the whole day. The last handful of jobs we have done I've been weddings and a birthday for some 13 year old kids. We get far more young kids birthdays than we do bar-hopping partying birthdays.
A middle eastern, Excursion limo owner, was arrested a couple of years ago. 20 people were killed, when the modified/stretched 2001 Excursion, lost control on steep hill. One of the reason was an overloaded vehicle and safety issues
I know about that well as that's all anyone was talking about in the limo business for a few weeks. Very rarely do people die in limo crashes so there is a lot of gossip about it when something does happen.
That vehicle was a rusted out piece of crap in a New York climate that had tons of rust and already been put out of service at least once if not two to three times for needed repairs or for repairs not being completed properly. It was not even supposed to be on the road. It also sounds like that guy would use any particular driver he could find any time just to cover a run. A very haphazardly run limo company. The guy driving probably wasn't well-versed with old beat-up vehicles and knowing what to do to stay safer. My guess is a brake line burst. On an Excursion you have one brake line that sends fluid to the rear brakes. When it pops your pedal goes to the floor and you only have about 30 to 40% of your braking ability from your fronts. And that's only until you run out of fluid.
It would be nice to know whether it was the first time the pedal went to the floor or if it failed a little earlier and he was trying to milk it on through the run as so many people do.
With judicious use of the brake pedal and then using the parking brake with the handle pulled and turning overdrive off and even gearing down into second to slow you down on Hills, you can make stopping the vehicle much safer and much more probable.
It was a rusty vehicle in poor condition and just so happen to be on a very known dangerous road going downhill and teeing off at a stop sign where they have had a good number of accidents.
He was probably barely on down that road at far too great of a speed.
I was greatly surprised to see that everyone in the back was killed. There were 17 in the rear two people on the ground that he hit got killed and the driver. For a total of 20.
I assumed that it probably went Airborne or bounced and most all the injuries were head and neck injuries that killed them. More than likely from bouncing into the roof. With 17 people flying forward even on a head-on collision like the safety test they do into brick walls, the bodies in the front would at least cushion the blow for some of the people in the rear and I just don't think everyone would be killed. I think this was a lot of slamming people up into the roof situation for no one to survive. I think the only had his speed nothing over 58 to 62 so it wasn't super excessive as far as Strait on collisions butt bouncing someone up into the ceiling can be a different story.
07navi
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Oh that? Well the Ex that blew the stop sign, went on a wild ride, and killed 20 people was running Michlens at 40 PSI but it didn't help.
You're the best man. I'm there for you when you need help. Not. You're about as much help as Trump in a global pandemic.
MrTobe may have answered my question but I'll never know! Ha!
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I'm not sure what the question was referring to. The original post?? If you mean by yours and the original question posed when the thread opened ...how does the tire look with this much air in it? It looks okay but maybe five or six pounds low in my opinion. It's not bulging excessively though. You might get longer wear or better fuel mileage with a few more pounds but the only accurate way to determine from there would be the chalk method and see how evenly the line wears.
On the crash Excursion, I don't recall reading what brand of tires or what PSI was in them but it should have had load range e tires and they should have been inflated much more than 40 PSI, more like at least seventy if not the actual rated maximum load capacity of 80. Even if they were standing michelins they would still say 44 max PSI on the sidewalk but you should never put a standard load tire on a stretch Excursion. They do not come from the factory that way. There were plenty of town car and other sedan limos that came from the factory with standard tires depending on the stretch length and some came from the factory with tires that probably shouldn't have been on the vehicle to begin with but every stretch SUV I have ever seen especially excursions that come from the coachbuilder have load range E tires on them.
Most coachbuilders even have their own sticker to place inside the driver's door jam that tells you what size tire to use specifies it is a load range E and requires 80 psi inflation because that's the only safe way to do it. You can't be running around with a heavy vehicle like that with standard tires or load range e tires with 50 psi because they are not up to carrying the load you are trying to haul.
07navi
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Obviously you don't know my qualifications and you might need my help someday, don't be a wise guy.
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