Solitude leaning to one side.

klr650goldwing wrote:
What are the odds we can go that many miles without something breaking?

I can't answer what the odds are, but it does happen and it can be troublesome to repair on the road.

We took a trip from MD to VT last year. We were on the NY Thruway towing at 68 mph for several hours. Pulled into the campground, which had some large potholes. Hit a decent size pothole, heard a loud bang and I saw smoke from the passenger side wheels of the trailer. Thought I blew a tire, pulled over immediately. I saw that the rear leaf spring bad broken within a couple inches of the eye. The weight was resting on the top of the tire.

Limped the trailer about 1000 feet to my campsite. Spent the next 2 days finding a trailer shop, buying a replacement leaf spring (which had an additional leaf and 800 or so lbs of load carrying capacity. Just my luck, I had helped a friend grease his wheel bearings a couple weeks earlier and left my bottle jack at home in my carport, so I had to go find a bottle jack as well.

Eventually I jacked up one the side of the trailer with the broken spring, used my 4x6 levelling blocks as cribbing and swapped out the one broken spring. I noted that the stock shackles were getting ovalized and the plastic bushing was pretty destroyed. Rest of the trip was nerve rattling for sure!

Got home, replaced the other 3 springs and installed wet bolt kit with wider shackles. It was hot at home so I did one side at a time. It was very easy with appropriate jacks and jack stands. I'd imagine that a leveling system would make it much easier to do.

It's my opinion that the OEM springs are mediocre at best. They are designed to be at the upper end of their capabilities, which makes it more prone to failure in my opinion. It cost me about $400 to replace the springs with a higher weight rating AND the wet bolt system. It gave me substantial peace of mind...