Former Owner of 5 RVs

[VIC THE STIK]

Greetings, All. My trailering career dates back to 1992 off and on. I have five blowouts on my resume. I am considering either a Micro Minnie 1700 bh or Minnie Drop. I like 20’ish long trailers because many State, BLM, and National Forests have parks with restrictive clearances. I also recently bought a 2018 Nissan Pro4X short bed so lower trailer weights are required. My observations on the two alternatives:

Micro Minnie - all 1700bh I’ve researched on the internet include 3 packages, extreme weather, off-road, and heated enclosed tanks. They also contain a sizeable outer door on the rear left side for stashing lawn chairs, golf clubs, etc.

Minnie Drop - has one slide out to create a nice living room/kitchen space. Most desirable about this unit is an outdoor kitchen at the rear with a large door that serves as a canopy.

Here’s the questions. After downloading brochures from the Winnebago website, I still don’t have a good handle on what the extreme weather package means. Ive read that there are two foils in the roof area, but what about the walls/floors? Any added insulation there?

I recommend travel videos on YouTube (free). I’m impressed with the quality of filming that these folks achieve. I have learned countless factoids. For example, I used to think 10-ply tires (I like Michelin) were as good as you could get. One videographer brought up Sailun which is a commercial grade tire with 14 plies. It’s a Chinese product, but Walmart sells it. Maybe if I’d had Sailun tires, I’d only have 4 blowouts on my resume.

Good to be onboard.

[creativepart]

Welcome aboard.

I can't answer your questions about the extreme weather package. But I too have had 5 blow outs on past TTs that I owned.

They say even a monkey learns after the 3rd time... but my TT came from the factory with "C" load rated tires and when one blew I replaced all 4 of them at Discount Tire with one size larger tire. But still got C rated tires. Then as they would blow - about one a year - Discount Tire would replace them for free. You guessed it with another C rated tire.

Finally, I wised up and got "E" rated 10-ply tires and never had another blow out again.

I had not heard of anything better than 10-play. But 10-ply worked a treat for me.

[Morich]

I have evolved on the subject of blowouts and now tend to blame the tires less than other factors. It was a gradual process to change my mind and actually came about after my brother had a major blowout, taking out part of the wall as well as the brakes!
His trauma woke me up to watching closer and I bought a tire pressure monitor for my motorhome, which led me to a whole new view of what my tires are doing as I travel. I suspect trailers are even more prone to side sway which does add to heating, so perhaps give this info some thought.
I now feel that I was often running on tires which were not aired correctly, even when I did as recommended and aired to the correct specs for cold tires. Step one for my change in attitude was finding how much tire temperature and also the resulting pressure will change. It varied a lot, even when just setting in the yard in the sun!
Now that I am able to watch the temp and pressure as I start a trip and as the outside temperature changes, I am getting a totally different view of blowouts.
Remember when Ford Explorers were having blowouts and rollovers almost daily? One of the major changes is that they now have tire pressure monitors and people drive on tires that are half flat far less.
My current thinking is that we do need to pay attention to get the correct tires and air them correctly but add to that a monitor so that we can actually watch what that "correct" pressure leaves the tires doing as we drive.
I find that airing all my tires to the spec of 82 PSI and then driving, will leave one inside dual going as high as 120 while the rest may go to 100 PSI on an average day. My only explanation for the difference is that the tire is about four inches from the exhaust.
I might also note that I have weighted the RV and it is not overloaded.
Since we are hard pressed to know or feel the difference in ride when a trailer tire is doing anything funny like over or under pressure or heating, I feel like a bit of money invested upfront gives us a much better chance to avoid any surprise blowouts that might cost thousands to fix or even kill me.