Flat springs and now a bent axle
Earlier this year I was doing bearing maintenance on my 2017, 17 ft, single axle TT, bought in 2018. I noticed a small dent in the frame where the spring U-bolts had bottomed out. The springs had lo...
Forum Discussion
BarabooBob wrote:
I checked the axle to see if it was bent. The axle is bent so it needs to be replaced. I think the axle got bent because of the flat springs bottoming out.
I weigh the TT before most trips because I have free access to a commercial scale 1 mile from my house before I get to the highway and am not overloaded. I checked the axle tag and it say that it is a 3200# on a TT with a 3500# loaded weight.
Checked how? An axle is purposely bent up (Cambered). If you run a string or straightedge on the underside of the axle, from the inside edge of spring perch to spring perch when the trailer is unloaded, it should camber up @ 5/8" which would result in the wheel leaning out at the top @ 1-1/2 degrees (positive wheel camber). For tires to wear on the inside the axle would need to have it's camber opposite of that, or the spindles would have to have bent out of plane with the axle camber, resulting in the wheels leaning in at the top (negative wheel camber). That's almost if not impossible to make happen, a hit that hard would damage other stuff first, like bend the hell out of the spring hangers. The intent is when the trailer is loaded the axle camber comes out and the wheel camber comes back to O degrees. It's hardly an exact science on a trailer.
