Wheel and Tire upgrade
I had a blow out with a TOWMAX tire. The tires had good tread no signs of dry rot. I was on the freeway about 5 mi. and the big bang. OOOOHHHHH**********t. Pulled it over and put spaire on and went home. This sucks because we were planning a big trip about 7000mi. I weighed the trailer and found I have 9000lbs on the axels. My tiers were the Towmax on 15" rims. With checking out the tires and weight I found I was right at max weight. What I did was pull the old wheels and tires off. Dropped the axels cut the hangers off. I have the Dexter axels so I called a Dexter rep after looking at their website.
http://www.dexteraxle.com/
I also seen the EZ Flex kits http://dexteraxle.com/e_z_flex_equalizers .
After talking to the rep and seeing the videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=a6hXCegZNxE I thought I would give them a try. Boy sure glad I did. The axels were set at 33" center to center. The rep also said I should change the spacing to 35" center to center. I also raised the trailer 3" doing so. The reason for rasing was because there was only a 1 1/2" clearance from the top of the tire to the wheel well above it. O the trailer is a 2008 Keystone Laredo 29RL. I made a new frame and welded the new spring hangers to it with the new spacing. I got the proper measurements from Dexter nice people to deal with at least this rep was and said if I had any questions feel free to call him which I had other questions and hey promply call me back.I used 2"x3"x .250 wall square tubing. I did fab work for a living so this wasent a problem for me to do. The hardest part was getting jack stands big enough to handle the weight and getting it jacked up high enough to have clearance to put the new stuff back under. I wished I would have more pic's along the way. That was an after thought. It took me two days to do the job mainly because I had to weight for the parts. Jacked it up the first day and pulled everything off. My local vender didn't have all of the parts. Second day made the new frame and welded the new hangers on and slid the frame under the trailer. I used a floor jack and more jack stands to hold every thing in place. I centered the center hangers to where the old hangers were "Make sure you mark where the old ones were". I had found that the factory hangers did not have all of the same spacing center to center on the holes of the hangers. This was a lupert frame. Maybe that was good enough for them but I want things right. I also measured to the kingpin to make sure it was square. I used a plumb bob for this. Welded every thing up. I believe this is stronger than the original because of the cross members. It is basicly a square frame.
Went on our trip and all went good and the trailer seemed to ride smother watching it in the mirrors. One other thing these rims are good too 110 lbs. of air so I could go to a g rated tire if I wanted to.
http://www.dexteraxle.com/
I also seen the EZ Flex kits http://dexteraxle.com/e_z_flex_equalizers .
After talking to the rep and seeing the videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=a6hXCegZNxE I thought I would give them a try. Boy sure glad I did. The axels were set at 33" center to center. The rep also said I should change the spacing to 35" center to center. I also raised the trailer 3" doing so. The reason for rasing was because there was only a 1 1/2" clearance from the top of the tire to the wheel well above it. O the trailer is a 2008 Keystone Laredo 29RL. I made a new frame and welded the new spring hangers to it with the new spacing. I got the proper measurements from Dexter nice people to deal with at least this rep was and said if I had any questions feel free to call him which I had other questions and hey promply call me back.I used 2"x3"x .250 wall square tubing. I did fab work for a living so this wasent a problem for me to do. The hardest part was getting jack stands big enough to handle the weight and getting it jacked up high enough to have clearance to put the new stuff back under. I wished I would have more pic's along the way. That was an after thought. It took me two days to do the job mainly because I had to weight for the parts. Jacked it up the first day and pulled everything off. My local vender didn't have all of the parts. Second day made the new frame and welded the new hangers on and slid the frame under the trailer. I used a floor jack and more jack stands to hold every thing in place. I centered the center hangers to where the old hangers were "Make sure you mark where the old ones were". I had found that the factory hangers did not have all of the same spacing center to center on the holes of the hangers. This was a lupert frame. Maybe that was good enough for them but I want things right. I also measured to the kingpin to make sure it was square. I used a plumb bob for this. Welded every thing up. I believe this is stronger than the original because of the cross members. It is basicly a square frame.
Went on our trip and all went good and the trailer seemed to ride smother watching it in the mirrors. One other thing these rims are good too 110 lbs. of air so I could go to a g rated tire if I wanted to.
