You’ve finally got a house on wheels and are ready to start traveling. But before you push off, let’s talk about tires. We drove our Ram Promaster City Camper Van with it’s factory tires until they had just over 52,000 miles on them. Right before we left for a cross-country road trip in Canada, we decided to upgrade to a nicer set. Check out our review on what we think are the best camper van tires for the Ram Promaster City.
Choosing the Best Tires for Van Life
First off, we had help in choosing the best camper van tires thanks to Erin’s dad. He was the owner / operator of a NAPA auto repair shop for over 40 years. He helped us narrow down all of our choices. When it comes to tires there are a TON of options, everything from tread to size to season, etc. You’ve also got to consider factors like where you’ll be driving, road conditions when you’ll be driving, cost and, of course, safety. With all of these things in mind, we ended up deciding that the best tires for our Ram Promaster City are the Yokohama Avid Ascend GT Tires.
Yokohama Avid Ascend GT Tires for the Ram Promaster City
After narrowing down our options, we finally chose the Yokohama Avid Ascend GT tires for our van. The reason we chose these tires for our Ram Promaster city:
Fit
The Yokohama Avid Ascend GT tires fit on our Ram Promaster City. Sounds like an obvious reason but we don’t want to understate the fact that you need to make sure the tires you’re ordering are compatible with your van. If you’re ordering online check to make sure they will work for your vehicle.
All-Season
We wanted All-Season tires. When traveling around, we’re often at elevation and are frequently driving in inclement weather. (We encountered hail four times this summer in Canada alone.) The tires we chose needed to be grippy in both wet and dry conditions. In addition to the various weather conditions, we also wanted tires that we didn’t have to swap out at different points of the year. The main reason for this is that we simply have nowhere to store a second set of tires! Enter the all-season Yokohama Avid Ascend GT tires.
So far we have experienced one winter with these all-season tires and they did just fine. We experienced a few, light snowfalls and the tires performed just fine. No slipping, no sliding, no locking up.
Tread
If you’re like us, you’ll want to spend some time thinking about it when making a decision about purchasing tires and then you’ll probably forget all about it. That is, if you make a good decision. And by good we mean the tread on your tires does the job (grips) and lasts a long time (durability.) The tread can also have an impact on the overall ride (how it feels to be in the vehicle while in motion) as well as noise. Here’s what Yokohama has to say about the tread on their Avid Ascend GT tires: “The tread pitch variation and Outside Adaptive Shoulder Blocks are designed with a focus on noise attenuation for a quiet driving experience. Four deep, circumferential grooves utilize asymmetric widths to aid standing water evacuation through the footprint, while the inside shoulder features open notches to allow water to pass through.” In other words…Yokohama has thrown some technology into these tires to make them quiet, ride smoothly and keep you safe in wet conditions.
Cost
We spent $110.99 on each tire for a total cost of $443.96. We also were able to get a $70 Yokohama Visa Prepaid Card because of a promotion that was going on. The $70 rebate brought our total cost down to $373.96.
Durability
We drove east to west through the United States all the way from Delaware to Seattle as well as west to east all the way though Canada via Vancouver Island to Nova Scotia on the Yokohama Avid Ascend tires. We’ve had plenty of experience with them in inclement weather (it hailed four times on our trip and rained a ton) and on unfavorable roads. We are pleased to report that they held up to many, many miles of off-road driving where the surface was more loose gravel than an actual highway. (If you’ve been through Saskatchewan, you’ll know what I mean!) These tires have so far stood up to whatever we have thrown at them.
Where to Buy Tires for the Ram Promaster City
There’s a ton of options on where to buy tires these days. You can go to the dealer that you purchased your van from. Some places may have tires in stock but most will have to order them for you. You can also go to your local mechanic. These days you can even order them online. Some popular sites are tirerack.com (they’ll ship them to the certain tirerack.com dealers for you) and of course, Amazon. A quick Google search for the Yokohama Avid Ascend GT Tires will bring up a ton of options. Make sure the ones you order have these additional details:
Yokohama Avid Ascend GT 215/55R16
Style: Blackwall
Load Range: XL
Serv. Desc: 97H
If you’re not in the Ram PMC, double check and be sure you’re getting what fits.
Ram Promaster City Factory Tires
A few quick notes about the Ram Promaster City factory tires: Some of the comments we’ve heard from other Ram Promaster City owners is that the factory tires are noisy. I can’t say we noticed the noise a whole lot. It could be in part because we often have the radio playing, are driving with the windows down, and also possibly because we have the Wayfarer Conversion Kit which comes with insulation panels.
Also, as mentioned before, we got just over 52,000 miles on the factory tires. We had them rotated and balanced with each oil change (we use synthetic oil so it was roughly every 5,000-7,000 miles) and were diligent in checking the tire pressure. The alignment was checked twice in that time frame as well. When we felt the steering wheel begin to pull on our trip in Canada, we had a mechanic take a look and he was able to clean out a bunch of dirt and mud that had built up inside the wheel well when we drove through Saskatchewan. The cleaning resolved the pulling and we were good to go again.
Best Tires for the Ram Promaster City Camper Van
There’s a ton of tire options out there but we’ve been really happy with the Yokohama Avid Ascend’s. When it’s time to replace them we’ll probably go with the same set unless something better comes along. Questions or comments? We’d love to hear from you.
Like this? You might also like our Fall and Winter Essential Camper Van Gear Guide as well as some of our DIY hacks like how to make your own DIY camper van bed and DIY window screens.
Authentic Asheville is a team of two. We’re Caroline Whatley and Erin McGrady and we are freelance photographers, writers and content creators who travel in our Ram Promaster City with a Wayfarer Conversion Kit. Want to work with us? Drop us a line at hello@authenticasheville.com and check our portfolio out here.