I caused a lot of Problems by not having my tow bar set right

[dcummins56]

Hi, I have a 2016 Surveyor 251, RKS. I had a right rear tire blow (summer 2019) which tore a hole in the floor and eat up the coauch. Insurance paid $12000 to repair it. I did not have TPMS. Replaced the China bombs with Carlisle E rating. Jan. 2021, a leaf spring broke on the right rear, which let the right rear side get jammed under the trailor, blew the tire. I was on I 10 in Louisiana, worse road I have ever been on, had a wall on each side, and had to pull the trailor 1/4 mile knowing somthing was wrong, but couldn't pull over. I found a place and got help.

Granger RV Center brought in 2 young mechanics that somehow installed the wrong lengh spring. A month later I was thinking of upgrading the suspension and had to get under it to do some measuring and discovered the spring was wrong. Long story short I had Texas Country Rv (Cannon Lake TX) replace all 4 leaf springs with new hangers with greese zerks.

I always had a nagging suspession my front of the trailor was 2 high in the air. I would check using a level, on the floor, and it would be dead on inside the RV. I did some measuring at my Sis's home near Terlingua TX got the trailor dead on level, and I had my hitch 4 inches to high.

My conclusion is that with the front end up in the air, it was putting unneccessary weight on the rear axle. When the tire blew I didn't feel a thing or see anything happening untill the truck was bouching up and down. How long I pulled it with the tire shredding, I'll never know. The tire was bounching around for sure and put a lot of strain on that spring, which broke on a nasty rutted I 10. So I have spent a lot of money because I'm a dumb ass. I didn't know about China bombs at the time.

The trailor pulled better, after I made the adjustment. We love the trailor,

[Reverse_snowbird]

Most of us learn these things the hard way and you've learned some hard lessons.

We traveled for 4 years in our tt with china bombs with no problems until we hit a curb the wrong way and blew a tire. We also towed nose high for months and found correcting it made towing easier. Had to replace a leaf spring next to the blown tire and it took us forever to find a shop that could do it competently. A couple of shops told us the leaf spring was ok when it clearly was not.

One word of caution... don't depend too much on a TPMS. Friends had the outside of the tire shred, but the TPMS didn't go off because the tire didn't loose pressure. It made a terrible racket and that's how they found a bare tire.

We do a visual inspection each time we stop and check tire pressure every morning before we take off. We also carry a tire inflator.