Ride Rite Air Bags on 2011 Coachmen or similar year

[TripleClamp]

Looking at a 2011 Coachmen Freelander 32BH. On each side of the RV by the dual back wheels there is a standard air valve, well supposed to be. On the one side it's not there, it's zip tied about a 1.5 feet in, in front of the wheels. On the other side the valve is there but the hose leading to the bag is severed.

They said wheel blowouts caused the lines to get damaged.

Question: There doesn't appear to be any wheel wheel protection on this unit. Is it supposed to be there? If we get these repaired how do you go about protecting the lines from a tire blowout?

[TripleClamp]

ron.dittmer wrote:
Does each air bag have it's own shrader (tire) valve?

Each has it's own valve coming through the exterior panel by the rear wheels. I'll have to see how they hooked the lines up to see if they are exposed.

[ron_dittmer]

Glad to read you are being taken care of. Like you say, there is a 5 psi minimum requirement to maintain integrity. One bag might be permanently damaged.

Does each air bag have it's own shrader (tire) valve? Or do they share one valve? I personally prefer one shared valve so the air bags maintain equal amounts of air pressure, a natural balance, very easy to add and remove air too. If one bag leaks, they both leak and therefore the rig would never lean to one side.

We had rear air bags in our first motor home. It had an on-board compressor with pressure gauge switch and release by the driver's left knee to increase or decrease pressure as you drive. The air bags shared the pressure equally.


The air compressor is seen in the bottom of this picture.

[TripleClamp]

They got the lines fixed. They did find one air bag was leaking and are going to fix.

[Snowman9000]

I would think new bags would not be too expensive. But that's just a guess.

[TripleClamp]

Will do. One more thing to check.

After reading a manual about the Rite Rides, says they should be inflated to a minimum of 5 lbs or damage could occur. The one line was completed severed so I'm not sure any air was in it for who knows how long.

[pauldub]

You need to make sure the tires are appropriate for the load. See if they match the sticker in the door jamb. Need to be load range E or better.

[TripleClamp]

Sounds good. If we take delivery, they said they would fix the air bags. I'll look at where they routed the lines. Tires look pretty new, replaced recently, with about 5000 miles on them.

[DrewE]

I generally agree with pauldub above...it's much better to avoid blowouts than to spend too much time and money (and added weight) to make the RV blowout proof.

My '98 Coachmen does have some sheet metal liners in the wheel wells to partly protect wires and the air lines and such. I think they are more for protection from stones and such that may be kicked up than from blowouts.

You could probably route the lines through a pipe of some sort. Something like black iron pipe might even be strong enough for a blowout. I suspect many lighter types of pipe would not help much for that. (Avoid PVC if you mught travel in cold weather; particularly when cold, it can break by shattering into a bunch of sharp shards.)

[pauldub]

The best way to protect them and yourselves is to maintain the tires such that blowouts are unlikely. If the previous owner had multiple blowouts, they probably were running underinflated tires.

[Chris_B_in_MD]

Our 2002 25' Shasta Sprite had the helper air spring on the back which the previous owner "never bothered with". One side had a slow leak & I found a leak @ the filler valve. It was not hard to replace the plastic lines because they simply press together. You just have to find the right store that carries those type of things. Here in MD I found them @
http://www.colliflower.com/frederick
As far as protecting them I'm not sure other than re-routing them to another location.
Chris