road and hitch tips

[bobaronson]

Three tips. First, and this should be obvious but is often overlooked, be sure to have your wheel bearings checked and packed at least once a year. When you stop always feel the hubs on your wheels. If they are abnormally hot you may have a bearing going, get it checked immediately or you could suffer great and expensive damage.

2. Also, when driving great distances in the summer heat stop every couple of hours for sure to let your tires and bearings cool off. RV's blow tires easily when they get too hot...given 'em a break once in a while.

3. We've tried three weight distribution/anti sway hitches and the best we've found is the Husky Centerline, but be careful with it. If your tow vehicle and your trailer are not lined up perfectly straight when removing the sway bars you could get hurt. I had a bar swing out after getting the trailer jacked up and it hit me just below the knee causing severed trauma and swelling. I'm lucky it didn't break my leg. The bars are perfectly safe if the car and trailer are straight to one another but stand back anyway when removing the bars. We tried the Equalizer but the brackets on the trailer tongue would bend and break and the Reese dual cam was the worst for sway control.

[RoadTrip]

Are the packed bearings once per year advice for motorhomes or just trailers?

[bobaronson]

Good question about the wheel bearings. I was speaking of trailers but why not motor homes, too. I'd ask your dealer about it. I have blown two wheel bearings on my trailer in the period of a year. Once on the freeway outside of Atlanta a motorist pulled along side us and was frantically pointing to the rear of our vehicle. We couldn't see it in the mirror but smoke was pouring out of the wheel well. We pulled off the road into a parking lot and the wheel was hot, the tire shredded and sitting an an angle. Fortunately found a repair service that came to the trailer but we spent the night in the parking lot until he could get new parts in the morning. the damage was so bad to the tire, drum, and brakes it cost $800 to get it fixed. The second time it happened we were again unaware there was anything wrong. We pulled into a campground as as we were about to unhook the trailer from the truck I noted a trailer wheel sitting an an angle. Again we were fortunate to find a repairman who made house calls. When he got there he jacked up the side of the trailer with the bad wheel and it fell off. The bearing had burned out and it was a different wheel from the last time. In the first case I was unaware of the importance of packing the bearings. In the second I had just had them packed and the service tech had apparently tightened the bearings too much. Ya gotta make sure your technicians know what they are doing. In this case we replaced the tire, the drum and shoes but only $500 that time. Finally on a hot day last summer we were rolling along at about 60 mph when a tire blew. We could see in the mirror that rubber was flying all over the highway. This was quite a surprise being as all the tires were new. The guy who came to change the tire for us said his shop had trucks out for RV's with blown tires all over the area. he said it was a combination of things causing all the blowouts. First, he said, it was the heat and secondly his opinion was that RV manufacturers put lousy tires on the vehicles they sell. When he pulled the tire off we noticed that when it blew it blew part of the side of the camper off and tore a hole in the subflooring of the Trailer. This even was covered by insurance but it cost $300 for the repair guy and a new tire and $900 to fix the damage to the trailer. Don't mean to scare anyone with horror stories but we've had our share of them. We no longer have that trailer but found out later that it had a bent axle. and that could have been causing the problems.