A (sad) update on our trailer axles
This blog post contains Amazon affiliate links. We may receive a small commission for items purchased through these links. Thank you for supporting our adventures!
In the debate of "leaf spring vs. torsion axles," we have basically become the poster children for torsion axles not being superior. We have had axle issues since the day we took delivery of our trailer. You name it, it's happened: Axles underrated for our weight. Defective axles. Bent axles. Broken swing arms. But we've never had a broken leaf spring!
Torsion axles, despite being pricier, do offer a smoother ride than leaf spring axles, and typically, they have less maintenance. Except in our case. Here's the abridged summary of what we've been dealing with.
In February of 2023, we went to Arizona get solar installed on our trailer, and our solar contractor noticed uneven wear on one of our tires. He said an axle was probably out of alignment, and we should get someone to take a look. We spent the next two months trying to find someone with availability to do an axle assessment, and we finally found someone. This is what brought us to Spanish Fork, Utah.
We set up camp in Spanish Fork County Park, and Garret the axle dude came to take a look on April 30. We know the date for a reason. You see, that same day, we were under flood watch. We stuck around so that we could get our axle assessment, and the floods weren't supposed to reach "actionable level" until a few days later. Garret let us know that both of our axles needed replacing. We had one that was bent, and the other had a busted swing arm. He set us up with the FleetPride in Payson, UT so we could get two replacement axles built. Besides the uneven wear on the tire, we were still good to travel for a little while longer. Garret just advised that we carry an extra spare tire, just in case.
Only, we had no time to decide if we felt safe continuing to tow with these axles. That night, the floods came early, and the situation became a lot more dire than we ever expected. The soil along the Spanish Fork River was so soft that the rushing waters busted through the banks long before the waters could reach actionable level. We needed to evacuate our campsite in the middle of the night. We made it out. The pets made it out. The truck barely made it out. The trailer didn't make it out.
Buggy got buried in soft soil as we tried to leave the campground, and we were forced to leave him sunken in the ground overnight, as the floods wreaked havoc on the campground. Once the waters receded, we were able to go retrieve him. Garret returned to help us extricate the trailer out of the ground, which was its own dramatic feat.
After being trapped in muddy, gravely soil for over 12 hours, Buggy's underside was extremely dirty. We also incurred some damage. We bent part of the rear trim and busted two stabilizer jacks. So many rocks got caught in our wheel bearings that we didn't know if our wheels had gotten damaged, too. We needed that checked right away.
And so, we remained in this part of Utah for the rest of the week, scrambling to make appointments to get as many repairs as possible before continuing on with our journey. We got our wheels checked and got the A-OK. We also got 4 new tires while we were at it. FleetPride built and installed two brand new axles for us. This was when we discovered that our axles were not actually weight rated as high as we thought. They were still technically enough, but with the extra force of barreling down the road, we had some doubts. Could this have been the reason why the axles didn't hold up? We didn't want to take anymore chances. We upgraded our axles, getting ones that were rated for well above our weight.
Recommended series:
We put the catastrophe behind us and continued on with our travels, finishing our second year on the road with spectacular experiences. Then, after spending Christmas at home, we hit the road again, heading south to Florida for the RV SuperShow and to visit with family and friends.
Along the way, we noticed a creaking sound coming from our trailer. We heard it the most while driving on uneven terrain, but it also happened when we were raising and lowering our tongue during hitching and unhitching. The sound was coming from our axles, but cursory inspections showed nothing blatantly amiss. We thought maybe the bearings needed greasing, or perhaps even the cool humidity was causing some condensation buildup. We didn't worry too much and proceeded on our way.
But the problem didn't go away, despite multiple weather changes. We made a plan to look for a FleetPride as soon as we had the time and opportunity. This came at the end of our Harvests Hosts Challenge, where we stayed at only Harvest Hosts and Boondockers Welcome locations for four weeks. The FleetPride in Fort Wayne, Indiana fit us in, and we did not like what they had to say.
Initially, they thought they just needed to repair the swing arms, but that didn't fix the problem. Upon closer look, they noticed that one of our axles looked bent. AGAIN?! We were stumped. These were the better rated axles, and it's not like we're speeding down the road like maniacs! We drive really diligently, being that we're towing our home, and all.
FleetPride told us that we'd want to get the axles replaced, but we could still travel for the time-being. We had heard that one before. Right after our Harvest Hosts Challenge, we had a service appointment at ATC, our trailer manufacturer. They weren't the people that could help us with the axles, but we did ask them to check our trailer frame to make sure all the connections were square. We had this fear that if the frame wasn't sitting properly, that maybe it was causing the axles to bend in weird ways.
The word came back: Our frame looked fine. We took the news with a grain of salt because, no matter what, we were about to get our third pair of axles in 3 years. Could this just be a coincidence? Sure. The first axles weren't rated as high as they needed to be, and the second pair were defective. But there could also be a root problem we don't know about, which would mean continuing to bust up axle after axle. This would not be fun, safe, or cost-effective.
This is where we left our multi-blog-post story, but we have an update, and it's not a good one. Because FleetPride is a national company, we hoped that we would be able to get our axles replaced at any location. However, after talking to the guys in Payson, they encouraged us to wait until we were in Utah. The axle builders are a couple towns over in Santaquin. We could drop the trailer off for a couple of days, get the axles installed, and be on our way.
Ummm, but Utah? When would we be back in Utah?! At the time we had this conversation, we were in Massachusetts. It's not like we could just hop in the truck and tow 2500 miles, on bum axles nonetheless. We thought it over. We were planning on putting Utah in our 2025 travel plans. We needed a redemption after Floodgate 2023. Hehhh, floodgate. That wouldn't be for several months, though. At this point, we wouldn't be traveling much for the rest of the year. We had plans to stay in New England. So the big mileage would be the cross-country drive. Still substantial, but at this point we had already traveled at least 6500 miles. What's another 2500? Perhaps not the soundest logic, but we didn't know what else to do. We were trying to get the replacement covered by warranty, and this posed a dilemma because the FleetPride guys were trying to figure out if the warranty would need to come from them or the manufacturer. We did the best we could to explain to everyone that these axle problems are not user error. We're well under their weight rating. We haven't hit any massive potholes. We don't even speed!
We continued on with our travels, once again, venturing from Massachusetts up to New Hampshire. Here, we focused our attention on more pressing issues: Our furnace wasn't working, and temperatures were starting to get a wee bit chilly. Getting the furnace fixed was a whole saga, but we finally did. With that stress over, we looked forward to a quiet week of camping at Lake Francis State Park in Pittsburg, NH, right near the Canadian border.
Only, we arrived to our campsite, and while leveling the trailer, we noticed that our axle issues had finally caught up to us.
Our front passenger-side tire looked lopsided. We examined it closely and found uneven wear. The inner tread was a couple millimeters shallower than the other treads. There were a lot of marks and grooves, like that part of the tire was digging into the ground more during travel. The sidewall wasn't completely worn down yet, but the marks in the rubber put us on alert. One section in particular looked like it could rip at any moment.
We had been keeping a close eye on our tires because we knew that eventually they might wear unevenly due to our bent axle. We've noticed, though, that sometimes it's hard to trust ourselves to actually be diligent. We do our checklists and our rounds, but looking for something that isn't there makes us wonder, if something was there, would we actually be observant enough to notice it? In some strange way, something going wrong gives us a boost of confidence. We noticed it right away, and that means our routine diligence is enough. We felt that way when we noticed the giant bolt embedded in our tire in Arkansas. This time was no different. We didn't like what we saw happening with our tire, but we caught it early. This means we avoided a potentially dangerous blow out on the mountain roads of New Hampshire.
We did have one problem, though. We were in the boonies! The North Country of NH is not known for bustling civilization. It was also a weekend, and we'd need to wait until Monday for most businesses to open. We thought about our options:
- If any local shop had our tire in stock or could order it, we could bring the trailer to get it replaced, or we could pick up the tire and replace it ourselves, at our campsite – something we've never done before.
- If a local shop couldn't get our tire, we could put the spare on until we made our way to civilization, at which point we would hopefully find a place that could help us.
Fortunately, the boonies don't always mean inefficiency. The places around here often need supplies for trucks, or when they have items in stock, they don't run out as quickly. To our pleasant surprise, we got an email from a tire shop we reached out to. We knew they wouldn't be open until Monday and didn't expect to hear back, but on Sunday we got a response. Even better, they had our tire in stock! We told them we would pick it up the next day.
Why did we decide to change the tire ourselves? Well, the tire shop was in Colebrook, over a half-hour away, and the roads are pretty hilly. We didn't want to risk the drive if we didn't have to. Plus, we were supposed to have another week at our Lake Francis campsite and we didn't want to need to pack up and tow to Colebrook, just to come back. We could have waited until the end of our reservation, but that again would mean towing on this tire. Plus, for our own learning, we thought this would be a good opportunity to replace a trailer tire. We had plenty of time and space. We would much rather attempt it in our campsite than on the side of the highway!
When we first got our trailer, the dealer recommended that we get a ramp jack for tandem trailer axles. They're easy to use and in a lot of ways safer because you can drive up on the ramp with one wheel and let its counterpart stay elevated off the ground. No need for a jack that's hefty enough to hold the weight of the trailer...although we do have one of those now, too! After we got a flat tire on our truck and realized we had no way of changing it ourselves, we bought a bottle jack. Then we figured, if we were buying one anyway, we might as well get one rated for our trailer weight, so we could use it for each. Unlike the ramp jack, the bottle jack isn't safe when used by itself. For extra support, we bought these jack stands. We were fully equipped with the items we weren't sure we'd ever need, but now here we were.
We planned to do our tire change the day before leaving the campground. That way, we could hitch up to raise the trailer, change the tire, and then stay hitched overnight. That plan did not work out, and you will see why if you subscribe to our blog, because that story is coming out in a subs-only blog post. Trust us, it was insane!
So, we needed to wait until travel day to change our tire, which was not ideal, but we gave ourselves plenty of time in the morning...or so we thought.
Everything started off smoothly. We hitched up and got the trailer elevated onto the ramp jack. Then we removed the worn tire. All of this took less than 10 minutes, but the step we were most worried about was trying to get the tire to pop off the rim. That's the problem with trying to do a full replacement as laymen. The new tire doesn't have a rim the way a spare does. But, we looked up some YouTube videos that showed various at-home hacks. One, which we thought was quite brilliant, used the trailer's tongue jack to put pressure on the tire and help break the seal around the rim. It worked like a charm.
But we still couldn't get the rim out from the tire. We tried prying it with a screwdriver, hammer, and even our sway bar crowbar! This tire was a tough cookie. In retrospect, we should have known this would be our downfall. We probably could have gotten a weaker tire off the rim, but we were dealing with 14-ply, steel-reinforced treads! We were no match for its level of brawn.
Our tenacity took us past check-out time, and so we went to the office to let them know we wouldn't be leaving on time. Thankfully, no one else was coming in that day, and so we were able to take as much time as we needed. Turns out, we didn't need much. After admitting defeat, we figured the best we could do was put on the spare. We still had the same spare from when we got the trailer, which means it's not the high rating of our new ones, but it's still a quality tire. Last year, we had Discount Tire check it when they were replacing the other four, and they said it was still in good shape, despite getting buried in a flood. Sure enough, it was dirty, but it would get us where we needed to go.
As expected, putting the spare on only took a few minutes. Our travel day brought us back to civilization, and we had booked a campground right up the street from a tire shop. That week, Anthony brought our tires to them, and 15 minutes and 40 bucks later, the rim was off one and on the other. Now we were ready to install the new one.
Once again, we waited until our travel day, and we were given permission by the park office to stay late and change the tire right in our site. This site wasn't as level as the last one, so we needed to first position the trailer in a place that the ramp jack would actually elevate the wheels high enough off the ground. Then we got to work.
We got the spare off, put the new tire on, reattached the spare to its holder, and filled the new tire with air. 30 minutes later, we were good to go...at least for now.
The frustrating part of this is, we know that the tire change was just a Band-Aid on a much larger problem. We spent $250 on this new tire, knowing all along that we'd be installing it on a bent axle. We worry about our other trailer tires. The ones installed last May are getting older, and we don't want them to wear faster than normal. A full replacement before we get our new axles would be a huge waste of money. To top it all off, we've been living under constant stress about our axles for months and months, thousands and thousands of miles. We never know when we'll be faced with another symptom of this major problem. We still have a really long road ahead of us before we can get to Utah and sort this whole thing out.