Caravan Tyre Care: Pressure, Tread and Age Checks

By Autumn Touring: Enjoying Quieter Campsites and Scenery
Comments 35
10 Jul 2026

Caravan Tyre Care: Pressure, Tread and Age Checks

Why caravan tyres deserve more attention than the car's

A caravan tyre has an odd life. For months it sits in the same spot, often under a cover or in full sunlight, carrying a heavy load without turning a wheel. Then, on a warm Friday in July, it's asked to run at motorway speeds for four hours with a family's holiday packed above it. Car tyres wear out gradually and give plenty of warning; caravan tyres often don't. They age, crack and lose pressure quietly, and the first sign of trouble can be a blowout at 60mph.

The good news is that most of the checks that keep you safe take a few minutes, need nothing more than a decent pressure gauge and a torch, and can be done on the driveway before you hitch up. Here's what to look at, and when.

Check pressures cold, and check them often

Always check tyre pressures when the tyres are cold, meaning before you've driven more than a mile or so. Driving warms the tyres, the air inside expands, and you'll read a figure that's several psi higher than reality. If you set pressures to the book figure when the tyres are warm, you'll be running under-inflated — the most common cause of caravan tyre failure.

Use the correct figure, which is not necessarily the one on the tyre sidewall. The sidewall number is the tyre's maximum, not your caravan's recommendation. Look for the pressure plate, usually inside the gas locker, on the A-frame or in the handbook, and remember that the recommended figure may differ between the caravan's laden and unladen weights.

Check before every trip, and again after a long day's towing once the tyres have cooled.
Expect pressures to rise by roughly 4–6 psi on a motorway run. That's normal — never bleed air out of a hot tyre.
A tyre can lose around 1 psi a month simply standing. Winter lay-ups often leave you two or three psi down by spring.
Fit metal valve caps if you can. They seal better than plastic and won't perish in the sun.
Replace valves when you replace tyres, and consider a tyre pressure monitoring system for peace of mind.

Tread depth and the things you can only see up close

Caravan tyres often start with less tread than a car tyre, so the legal minimum of 1.6mm across the central three-quarters of the tread arrives sooner than you'd think. My advice is stricter: once a caravan tyre is down to 2mm, plan to replace it. There's little margin for standing water on a single-axle van, and aquaplaning with a caravan behind you is deeply unpleasant.

Then get down on your knees with a torch and look at the whole tyre, not just the tread. What you're hunting for:

Bulges or lumps in the sidewall, which mean internal cord damage. Replace immediately, don't drive on it.
Cuts, splits or embedded objects, including stones wedged in the tread grooves.
Cracking and crazing in the sidewall rubber — the classic sign of perished rubber.
Uneven wear, which can point to a bent axle, worn suspension or a badly loaded van.
Flat spots from long periods standing in the same position.

Check the inner sidewall too. It's awkward to reach, which is exactly why problems hide there.

Age matters more than mileage

Rubber perishes whether or not you use it. A caravan tyre that has covered 3,000 miles in six years may look immaculate while being far more dangerous than a worn tyre on a daily driver. The accepted guidance in the trade is to replace caravan tyres at around five to seven years old, regardless of tread, and to inspect them carefully from year five onwards. Any tyre showing sidewall cracking should go sooner.

To find the age, look for the four-digit date code on the sidewall, usually after the letters "DOT". The first two digits are the week of manufacture and the second two the year, so 2319 means the 23rd week of 2019. If you've bought a secondhand caravan, check this before your first trip — a van that has spent years parked on a coastal site may be sitting on original tyres that are well past their best.

A five-minute routine before every tow

Build these into your hitching-up habit and they'll soon feel as automatic as checking the lights:

Pressures on all tyres, including the spare, when cold.
A visual check of tread, sidewalls and valves.
Wheel bolt torque to the figure in your handbook, and a re-torque after the first 30 miles or so of a journey.
Spare tyre condition and pressure — an unused spare at 20 psi is no spare at all.
A quick look at the jockey wheel tyre, which is easy to forget and hard to push when flat.

Storing your caravan between trips

If your van sits for weeks at a time, move it a short distance occasionally so the tyres don't sit in the same contact patch. Over winter, take the weight off the wheels with axle stands if you can, keep the van out of direct sunlight or cover the tyres, and avoid parking on oil, petrol or damp gravel, all of which attack rubber. Inflate to the recommended pressure before storage rather than leaving them soft, and give them a full inspection when you wake the caravan up in spring. A little care now saves a lot of trouble at the roadside later.

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5 Comments

Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

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Reply
- John Abraham says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
  
  I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
  Reply
  - Robert Sonnysays Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
    
    I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
    Reply
Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply

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