Safari Serengeti

Two Jayhawks wrote:
Greetings
My Zanzibar 3906 was approximately 40' and it did have the C12/Allison 4000. I had the 5" tubes on the rear and I suspect they were still a bit undersized for the weight (about 19K). The coach only had about 50K miles when they failed. After replacement the coach rode good as new. I stored the coach at my business, indoors, heated, jacks deployed, and that's where we did the work. I do have some rather dark lousy pictures I could share if you want to PM me your email address. I had purchased all mods, Trac bar, radius rods, as well as the new springs from Pioneer. If I had kept the coach I would have added their air bag set up. We wanted a larger coach so I sold it last summer. I hired a tech to work with me to do the spring change out. It took us about four days total to change out the rear the fronts were still fine. we were at a slight disadvantage as Monaco was of very little assistance. BTW Monaco claimed only 6 Zanzibars were built with the C12 set up. Lastly I talked to the gentleman that owns the Zanzibar about a month ago. My heart broke when he told me one of the rear tubes had just failed. Yes I see you were spot on with being better off with sulastic over old inventory. Regardless I am quite upset he is going through this. As you would imagine my thoughts are why bother with torsilastic at all just go with air ride in the first place.

Wow! It is great to learn something new! I did not know that they made Zanzibar models with the big C12, and I also did not know that they used the 5 inch tubes.
The secondary failure you describe leads me to believe that those 5 inch tubes were/are defective. The reason being is, there is a fellow I know in AZ who owns a '99 Panther with the C12 in it and torsional suspension. His torsion tubes are 4 inch and are original. Granted, they are on their way out, (he is down to one or two shims on some corners), but the weaker 4 inch tubes are still holding up under that stress. This leads me to believe that BF Goodrich had some manufacture issues at the tail end of their production. There is NO WAY the second set of tubes should have failed, being the stronger ones and low use. It seems that the later model coaches, like your '02 Zanzibar had the most issues, further leading me to believe that BF Goodrich was likely having issues towards the end of their production run, or at least during that time frame.


Did you replace the shackles when you replaced the tubes???

How did his spring fail? Did it completely collapse, or is he out of shims and border line on ride height?

Please pass on the info to current owner about Sulastic and about the 4 and 8 airbag kits. I know that Henderson's installs them and would probably sell them direct if the owner wants to do the work himself.

Please describe the process you went through changing the tubes. I know the Zanzibar owner who had all for of his tubes replaced back in 2012 at Redlands,took a lot of pictures. They used a special tool to load the springs. But the fellow who replaced his front tubes on his Foretravel, figured out how to safely do it w/o using the special tool. So I'm all ears (and eyes, once I get the photos). ;)

Yes, I would love photos and any and all information on how you did this.

I sent you a PM...

John