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Old 09-13-2018, 09:01 PM   #1
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Suspension disaster

Hi all,

Just thought I would remind everyone to check your suspension components before they fail. My camper is a 2015 XLR 27hfs and I have had a bad run of suspension failures over the last year... First I broke a leaf spring last year and then last week the inner wheel bearing exploded and trashed everything on the hub. During the hub replacement process I noticed the shackle links on the leafsprings looked weird so I disassembled them. As you can see the link is almost wore all the way through and about to fail and leave me stranded again. The other pic is what I did to get the camper home after the hub cooked, chain it up...
So, check your shackles if you have lots of mileage on your unit!
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Old 09-14-2018, 08:53 AM   #2
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Another one here, I have a 2014 27HFS and replaced the equalizer and all the bolts, shackles and bushings to wet bolts and bronze bushings, $ 170.00 total and about 3 hours
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Old 09-20-2018, 01:31 PM   #3
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replace my equalizer after the first year with the ez flex . comes with heavy duty shackles twice as thick as the stock ones , brass bushings for the springs , wet bolts to keep it all lubed up . the only way to go have seen to many of these shackles go bad .
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Old 09-22-2018, 07:07 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by 2000XLifted View Post
Hi all,

Just thought I would remind everyone to check your suspension components before they fail. My camper is a 2015 XLR 27hfs and I have had a bad run of suspension failures over the last year... First I broke a leaf spring last year and then last week the inner wheel bearing exploded and trashed everything on the hub. During the hub replacement process I noticed the shackle links on the leafsprings looked weird so I disassembled them. As you can see the link is almost wore all the way through and about to fail and leave me stranded again. The other pic is what I did to get the camper home after the hub cooked, chain it up...
So, check your shackles if you have lots of mileage on your unit!
I would think that worthy of a NHTSA report. Looks like an accident about to happen! If a widespread issue possibly a recall would be warranted.
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Old 09-22-2018, 08:00 PM   #5
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This is normal wear and tear on shackles, what year is your tt and how many miles?
Certain items like bearings and shackles require maintenance.
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Old 09-23-2018, 09:35 AM   #6
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This is normal wear and tear on shackles, what year is your tt and how many miles?
Certain items like bearings and shackles require maintenance.
Bearings yes regular maintenance . Shackles ? no maintenance to preform . it's low quality steel and this should not happen , i can understand spring bushings needing replace . but the amount of broken shackles and broken springs out there is crazy . clearly shows poor quality cheaply made materials
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Old 09-23-2018, 08:38 PM   #7
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Bearings yes regular maintenance . Shackles ? no maintenance to preform . it's low quality steel and this should not happen , i can understand spring bushings needing replace . but the amount of broken shackles and broken springs out there is crazy . clearly shows poor quality cheaply made materials
X2
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Old 09-23-2018, 08:52 PM   #8
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Usually the reason the shackles wear is because the bolt is spinning in the shackles. The bolt should have splines that lock the bolt from spinning. What usually happens is somebody either forced the bolt to turn and in the process rolled the splines. Or when the assembled the spring pack they used the wrong bolts. When I was building custom utility trailers we would tack weld the bolts to one side shackle then when they were put on the bolts would not wear shackles at all.
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