Axle flip on a small 16 feet Sportsmen

[vlopddap]

I just bought my first TT to replace our 10 feet pop-ups. It's a slightly used 2011 KZ Sportsmen Classic 16BH. I have only one concern till now; it's the trailer height. Just to reach my house from the main road, the kind of large triangular steel bracket under the rear bumper rub on pavement a few places when I climb steep hills. Obviously my TT is perfectly levelled with my towing vehicle. But to be honest, when the TT is parked in a parking lot, the rear bumper brackets only clear the ground by 3-4 inch maximum.

My axle is a Dexter and Dexter sell a "axle flip kit" which look to be extremely easy to install and very cheap too (like 40$).

I'm just wondering if it's a good solution and also if flipping axle have unwanted sides effects like a bad handling or anything else? I'll obviously need to redo my entire weight distribution hitch adjustment but it's not a big deal.

Thank you very much! 🙂

[vlopddap]

Buzam wrote:
Hey, I'm looking at having the axles flipped on my Dutchmen 275BH for the same reason. Can anyone who has had this done let me know about how much it cost to have it done at a dealer?

Cheers
Scott

Got mine flipped at a local trailer shop and I think it's a better place over the RV dealer for this specific job. I pay for 1 hour of labor at 69$/hour. The guy from the shop gave me the parts (the small rectangle metal piece that weld over the axle) for free since it worth under 5$ for him...

So it cost me 69$+taxes.

[Buzam]

Hey, I'm looking at having the axles flipped on my Dutchmen 275BH for the same reason. Can anyone who has had this done let me know about how much it cost to have it done at a dealer?

Cheers
Scott

[vlopddap]

johntinacamping wrote:
Good points about the propane. And actually, we have done the same with regard to heating the trailer since that infamous night. We use our furnace just to get the temperature up, then use an electric one to maintain the temp. It seems to work just fine and we've stayed a few nights in the low 20's. We cook outside most of the time also, either on a grill or a camp stove running on the small propane bottles. We use our propane tongue tank for keeping the fridge going during longer towing in hot weather and to run the water heater. I guess I'll stick with my single setup because your points make a lot of sense. It's easy enough to swap out the tank - unless it's 3AM :-). Thanks!

You're welcome! I agree, definitely an unpleasant thing to swap a propane tank at 3 AM! LOL 😉

[johntinacamping]

I haven't noticed a change at all in our power or fuel economy. We get the same mileage now as we did before. This camper is very easy for our Grand Cherokee to pull, however, with the 5.7L hemi. If we were closer to our vehicles' towing limit we might notice more of a difference. The trailer seems to tow much better now, but that is much due to me having greater ease of mind knowing I'm not going to be dragging the rear end or rubbing the tires in the fender wells on bumps. The fender well clearance before was maybe an inch. It was very tight. Now we have plenty of space and no worries.

[mr61impala]

Question.

How much does effectively adding a total of 5 inches in height to your frontal area affect your power and economy?

[johntinacamping]

Good points about the propane. And actually, we have done the same with regard to heating the trailer since that infamous night. We use our furnace just to get the temperature up, then use an electric one to maintain the temp. It seems to work just fine and we've stayed a few nights in the low 20's. We cook outside most of the time also, either on a grill or a camp stove running on the small propane bottles. We use our propane tongue tank for keeping the fridge going during longer towing in hot weather and to run the water heater. I guess I'll stick with my single setup because your points make a lot of sense. It's easy enough to swap out the tank - unless it's 3AM :-). Thanks!

[vlopddap]

johntinacamping wrote:
vlopddap, I see you have done a dual propane tank setup on yours also. That's definitely on my to-do list. One simply is not enough. And it's not fun to wake up at 3 in the morning with the wife saying "it's cold in here", then having to go out for a bottle swap to get the furnace back up and running. Ask me how I know :-).

This is funny you say that because I am actually working to downgrade it back to a single 20 LB tank because the dual system add way much tongue weight to the trailer and I tow it with a Dodge Caravan (2014) and we never use the propane heater (too much noise) nor we never cook inside the trailer, I always use a portable barbecue outside with disposable 1 LB cylinder. During the entire last summer season we use about half a 20 LB tank because we only use it for the water heater and I manually switch my water heater from ON to PILOT during the day (because I have the basic NON-DSI water heater). Anyway the PILOT keep water very hot for the dish use. For heating I use a electric low-power (750W, 6 AMP) oil filled radiator portable heater, it make NO noise at all (whisper quiet) and it keep my small 16 feet trailer very warm even near freezing temperature outside. Sometime I use the propane heater just to quickly warm the trailer, then switch to the electric heater.

What I do right now is I have one completely empty tank (out of my home barbecue) and one half tank from the last season. I already tried to tow the trailer with two full 20 LB tank and it cause A LOT of rear suspension bouncing on my Dodge Caravan, so I immediately swapped a full tank for an empty tank I had at home and it reduce suspension bounce significally.

The previously owner make the 2 tank conversion and I think it's useless depending how you use the propane. It's unwanted tongue weight for no gain in our case.

[RVcircus]

Looks great. It's insane how low the trailer was before the lift.

We did the lift on our Sportsmen 2505 last year and am so glad we did. The install wasn't bad and we now clear our driveway when backing in. It does raise the COG, but I haven't noticed any negative handling, but I'm never racing around while towing.

The only negative is the stair height, but the previous owner ripped the bottom step off before we bought the trailer. We needed to replace the steps anyway and I now have a 3 step unit in the garage awaiting installation. If we didn't lift the trailer I would have continued using a plastic step, so I'm actually glad this forced me to finally fix it right.

[johntinacamping]

vlopddap, I see you have done a dual propane tank setup on yours also. That's definitely on my to-do list. One simply is not enough. And it's not fun to wake up at 3 in the morning with the wife saying "it's cold in here", then having to go out for a bottle swap to get the furnace back up and running. Ask me how I know :-).

[vlopddap]

Thanks guys for the good comments. Your are all right, the Sportsmen Classic was barely unusable as stock. I own the Sportsmen for 1 year ago only but only have issues because of the ground clearance. By chance we didn't break anything but we rubbed the triangle brackets under the rear bumper a lot and on the dozen of campground we stayed during the last summer season, I would say we had sewer draining issues (slow drain) about 8 times over 12!

I'll consider a two entry steps later, because it's a little bit expensive and I am pretty sure the factory underfloor mounting brackets will be too small or narrow to fit a bigger two steps system so I'll need to custom fit and I don't have time for this right now, but it's now on my "To-Do List"! 🙂

[colliehauler]

They should come from the factory with the axle flip done and 2 step stairs. They are not user friendly in stock form.

[johntinacamping]

I had the same thing (flip) done on our Sportsmen Classic 19BH by our RV dealer using the Dexter kit. We also gained around 6" of clearance. It makes a world of difference. I can tow much more confidently now not worrying about scraping everywhere we go. We made (2) 500+ mile trips to the beach with ours prior to the flip and I really had to be careful pulling into and out of places. Also, as you have said, the sewer hookup works MUCH better now. It's almost unusable in it's stock location height-wise. The main problem we would have is at a dump station. Our sewer outlet would be below the concrete lip of the dump station drain. That's not easy to deal with. KZ really needs to improve this about the Classic line. Otherwise we love ours and have no other complaints. We've had it 5 years and have taken it on a couple of trips to the Smoky mountains since the flip and it's great!

[69_Avion]

You definitely needed the extra height.

[westend]

Nice work. Yeah, your picture of the initial Anderson installation shows how low that trailer was slung. Your new elevation seems about equal to mine, maybe a tad higher. I never have any scraping issues.