Electric stabilizers

myredracer wrote:
Sure, they do provide some level of stabilizing, but what bothers me is that upgrading to electric stabilizers is expensive compared to basic scissor jacks and there's some degree of expectation that they are better.

There may be other reasons for opting for the stabilizers if it is recognized that installation at the same 4 locations will not remove the shakes, and considering that the end user may not be able or willing to crank or even drill the stabilizers to use them.

myredracer wrote:
If you look closely at how the electric stabilizers flex and move around, if they wanted to, they could use thicker steel and stonger pivot bolts, but they build them the lightest and cheapest possible. It's surprising to see how much movement there is at the pivot bolt where the angle braces connect to the leg.

It is perfectly understandable that the maximum flexure will occur at where the strut is providing a point load to the stabilizer bar (beam) - elementary statics. Before increasing the thickness they would be better off increasing the depth of the main arms to get a faster increase in section modulus.

myredracer wrote:
Not arguing, just my 2 cents as an engineer. Things that are designed to be minimalist bug me, and when it comes to TTs, it not just the stabilizers that are like that.

I understand, and as a structural engineer myself I am glad to see your POVs. :) However, as an engineer I can fully appreciate the need to balance all the parameters that go into this - cost to implement, effectiveness, weight, etc. No engineer will overbuild anything not safety related, but that is another discussion.

myredracer wrote:
One of these days I am going to see what I can do to reinforce and beef up our elec. stabilizers. I even thought about trying to get the UltraFab Power Twin elec. stabilizers on our latest TT since they claim it stops side to side and front to back motion, but it looks fairly similar to the Lippert one and I decided against them.

If I were you, I would leave the strengthening of the stabilizers for the last resort. Instead I would first install something in way of the axles to take the suspension out of the equation (as much as can be allowed with a lightweight frame) and see how the six support points work. If still not satisfied, then you may want to consider either adding more supports or strengthening the stabilizers. However, it must be remembered that strengthening the stabilizers will mean that more load is transmitted into the lightweight frame and that will cause a different problem.

The best solution from an engineering standpoint is a uniformly distributed load under the frame - does not over stress the frame AND removes all vertical movement. The closer one can get to that point and still not be hassled by the extra bother, the closer one gets to the solution.