Rockwood Axles

[baknky]

Anybody had an axle issue with a RW fiver? We had a bearing go out on one of the axles on our unit 3/30/14 on I75 in northern GA and naturally it took the spindle with it. Called Good Sam Road. Assist. and they finally found a trailer repair place (non dealer) a few miles away. We managed to limp in to their yard and leave it. The next day the mechanic started trying to find a replacement axle. By 4/1/14 they had found it's a special order from AL-KO and ordered one. So we left our unsafe to travel rig there and went on home to KY in the Kia on the same day. At last report we still don't know when the axle will be available. Any other sources available?

2007 Rockwood 8288SS fiver
2004 F250 PS
2008 Kia Spectra (Wife drives the car with me to FL for winter)

[catmom]

Basically not. We had a similar problem with our Flagstaff a couple years ago, at the end of a long trip, and found a very competent, though small, repair shop in western Wyoming. We had to leave the camper there too. This was also an Al-Ko axle. You may not like to hear that the axle took almost a month to get there, but it did, they replaced the damaged one with the new one, repacked the wheel bearings, and we were good to go. Fortunately it was only about a 5-hour drive from our home back to pick up the camper, and we made a short camping trip out of the return. Not cheap, though. Good luck to you!

[baknky]

This was 1500 mi and 4 months after a complete bearing clean, inspect, repack, and new seal service by our local trailer shop. Go figure. However, I'll bet that we're only two of a whole big 'club' with the same experience. I suspect that Forest River has fitted a whole bunch of different brands of lite weight Fivers and TT's with these same axles, and you'd think that either FR or AL-KO would have at least one of them lying around somewhere. The whole thing kind of leaves you feeling like you've been abandoned, doesn't it?

[catmom]

I think we are part of a "club" - though one we'd rather not have joined. I don't know if I'd call it "abandoned," but the thing about axles is that they are big and heavy, and probably need special shipping. Ours certainly did to get to Dubois, Wyoming! (Not to an RV dealer, either, but to a gas station/mechanic shop.)

Our first problem with our hubs came when the trailer was a year old. I can't remember if we had had the bearings repacked before that. Incidentally, our owners manual said to have the hubs serviced after a year or something like 2500 miles (!) Anyway, if we hadn't had a truck service shop nearby when we blew that hub, we would have replaced an axle then, but he was able to get the "axle doctor" in his area to rebuild the spindle. This second time we blew the hub was near the end of a 5000-mile trip, right before which we had had a local dealer repack the bearings. We learned later that dealers often put their most junior guy on this job, and therefore they often are not done correctly. (Learned this from a mobile RV tech last year - we were just starting out on a camping trip and I noticed grease leaking out, in liquid form, from under the cap on one of our wheel hubs!! Called one the campground recommended and he was a gem! He redid two of our hubs while we were camped there for the weekend, and checked the other two - the ones that had been done by the shop that replaced the axle - and said they looked just fine. He said many less experienced workers tighten the hubs too much, making them run hot - that was the problem with ours, and it had already done damage to the bearings.) So your experience - 1500 miles & 4 months after the last wheel job - doesn't surprise me.
I do wonder if FR putting 3500-lb axles on their larger trailers & 5ers isn't such a good idea. I'm sure it saves weight, but I think those axles are right at their limit. Not sure if Dexter or Al-Ko axles are better, but I'm hoping we fare better with the Dexters on our new rig. (And if that mobile tech is still around, I'm planning on going to him for wheel service! He did say he might be moving to AZ. )