Fastway E2 Hitch Round Bar L Bracket Wear

[posservice]

I have 2018 (older style) Rockwood 2509s and a 2017 F350 CC SRW. First time out this year and haven't changed anything from last year.

After I got to the campground and removed the Round Bar from the Driver's Side I noticed this.

Any ideas why it would wear on one side like this? The other L bracket doesn't look like this although it has a little wear.

Thank you

[IchLiebeBier]

If you look at the setup from the side, is the bar fairly parallel to the frame, or does it go up at somewhat of an angle?

If it's parallel, maybe you have a loading imbalance of some kind, since it only did it on one side.

[posservice]

Thanks. I'll check when I hook them back up but they were fairly parallel if I recall.

[moose074]

Could there have been sand or dirt trapped. While I can’t remember if I was supposed to or if I choose to but I always had small amount of grease. Shop teacher always said where moving metal meets we needed to grease. Perhaps you did just cleaned it up for pic.

[posservice]

There wasn't any dirt or sand. That's a pretty deep galling. Not supposed to grease those

[woo10-210]

I have a very similar setup; 2902WS with a F250 SRW. My E2 was doing the same thing. The spring bars are tempered to give them, well, 'spring'. They are harder than the brackets and the brackets will wear. That's part of the design, the brackets are somewhat sacrificial. As IchLiebeBier mentioned, make sure the spring bars are parallel. This will not only spread the wear over a larger area and slow it down, but it may also increase the sway effectiveness. I've seen some plastic snap-in wear plates on Amazon and I've been tempted to try them but I think they will reduce the sway control friction.

[jeff64]

The wear pattern suggests a tilted installation. With a round bar vs. a square bar as in an equalizer system, the load is borne by a straight line at point of tangency to the point, literally point of contact on the bracket until this wear condition progressed. Just my take!

[posservice]

Thanks all. I'll see about some adjustment and check with Fastway also.

[Werk]

That seems excessive on one side as said it could be a set up problem. I found with my Fastway L brackets would shift no matter how tight they were mainly because the bracket set out from the backing plate and the nuts would dig into the bracket, this could be part of your problem the L bracket is loose. My brackets seem to wear fairly even but when you have metal against metal it's going to wear. On my last trip one of the hanger bolts broke off and it could have been from over tightening them, they say 70lb torque. Fastway and Equal-z-er are made by the same company so I called them and they said I could use Equal-z-er hangers on my E2 setup. I just finished replacing them last week and the L bracket tightens up to the backing plate a lot tighter. I bought the hangers from E Trailer being the best price and free shipping.

[Werk]

One other thing you could rotate the L brackets because they do seem to wear on the front side.

[posservice]

Thank you all. Appreciate it. They don't seem to move but maybe it was the way I connected it this time unevenly.

[posservice]

I took some pictures before I left the campsite we were at.

[woo10-210]

Looks like your L bracket may not be square to the trailer frame causing the bar to rub only on the front edge. You may want to try to square it up and add another bolt lower on the L bracket to keep it from pivoting.

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by Werk

One other thing you could rotate the L brackets because they do seem to wear on the front side.

That is the work of a genius! Mine aren't wearing much, but now I know I can get twice the life out of them as they do.

[Dustyhd]

Because of the length you need on the bottom of the L brackets, flip the outer link plate with the studs over so the studs are near the bottom. The instructions say to do this if you have a bottom mount coupler which you don’t have but you need the length as if you did.