If you are friends with me on social media, you probably already know this story. This past June, my wife and I packed up our 28-foot “toy hauler” and headed to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to celebrate our oldest granddaughter’s high school graduation. From there, we planned on spending the last few days of our vacation on the opposite side of the Tarheel state, riding our motorcycle along the various byways we’ve come to love in the Great Smokey Mountains. Our time away was nearing its end and we spent that last day adding a few hundred miles more to the odometer of the motorcycle, exploring the Foothills and Cherohala Parkways, just a short ride away from the infamous “Tail of the Dragon.” It was a simply perfect day, with perfect weather and perfect roads – what a way to end our stay!
Saturday morning, we loaded up and pointed our rig south for the trip home. Not even an hour into the drive, I began to hear an intermittent warning chime I wasn’t familiar with. Looking over the dash every time the chime sounded, I finally noticed it was coming from our trailer brake control panel, flashing a warning of “No Trailer Detected.”
I knew from past experience (helping our youngest with his RV rental business) that this warning light illuminates when a problem is detected in the electric brake system. It can mean an open circuit somewhere on the trailer, a problem with the truck’s onboard trailer controller, or simply that the trailer wiring connector wasn’t fully plugged into my truck. We stopped at the first place we safely could, and I stepped out of the cab to check that connection first.
It isn’t electrical
My wife exited from her side of the truck and immediately spotted the problem. Smoke was rising from the right rear wheel assembly of our tandem-axle camper. Of course, I was not a happy camper at that point! Moving the trailer over to a section of parking lot that was fairly clear of traffic, I jacked up the right side of the trailer and as soon as the wheel left contact with the ground it was even easier to see that had we not stopped when we did, our situation would have become a lot worse.
The wheel was rocking easily and it was immediately apparent that the wheel bearings had overheated and disintegrated. I removed the wheel and attempted to remove the hub, but the axle spindle nut was almost impossible to move. I had only a few tools with me and reached out to a local mobile service for help.
In the interest of political correctness, I am not going to share all the details regarding my experience with this service or its parent business. In fact, all I will say is that over the ensuing days, the customer service I received from numerous companies, both local and national, was less than stellar. All I could think of was how it was easy to understand why we, as an industry, still suffer the negative reputation we have with the average consumer. Readers of Motor Age know how I feel about providing every customer with honest and professional service, and as a member of this industry, the entire experience angered me – and saddened me – at the same time.
No, I’m going to refrain from listing all the negative encounters my wife and I had – I prefer to highlight the positive experiences we had.
Stranded far from home
Am I the only one, or is spending time working on your own stuff the last thing you want to do after a long day of doing it for everyone else? Even now, it seems that I have little time to service my own vehicles after the hours I spend working in the shop producing the content you read here or view online. Off the clock, my wife and I operate a small non-profit that tries to stem the tide of child abuse in our local area and assist victims of abuse and their families in their recovery. In what time remains, you’ll find me helping my son with his little RV fleet or just keeping up with the various chores that we all share.
Yeah, I’m making excuses for the obvious. The bearing failure was entirely on me. I have never bothered to check or lube them and have now learned the hard way that routine bearing inspection, cleaning and lubrication is a part of the RV life. And I’ll be honest – with all the odd job repairs I’ve made to ours and those owned by my son, I’ve learned more about RV maintenance and repair than I ever expected to.
Back to the breakdown. We finally got the wheel off at the expense of ruining the threads on the spindle. The inner bearing race had welded itself to the spindle anyway and the spindle was beyond salvation. The only repair solution I had was to replace the axle. My RV repair and service knowledge was about to grow even more.
Our 2013 KZ had axles made by a company called Al-Ko, a company that just happened to go out of business a year later. The new owner was a company called Dexter and if you work on RVs, you’re probably familiar with them. They are one of the largest makers of axles in the country. According to the mobile service guy that “helped” us out on Saturday, their parts supplier needed a valid Dexter number for the old Al-Ko unit before they could locate one.
I crawled under the trailer and took snapshots of the labels on the axles. At the time, I had no idea of what the numbers meant but I forwarded the pictures to the mobile guy’s parts man and waited for a call.
Which never came. But here, again, I don’t want to get sidetracked discussing the abysmal service provided by this “professional” business.
My wife and I thought that if they could find a supplier, so could we. Using Google as our guide, we began to scour the Internet for sources near and far. We quickly learned what measurements were needed to identify the proper replacement and, shortly afterward, we learned that there were numerous sources for axles that were ready to ship in every size except ours. It seems that our axle was a unique size which meant that a replacement would have to be custom made and, depending on the source we were talking with, that could take anywhere from three to 16 weeks!
For those of you who want to know the details, we learned that our RV was equipped with an 85.5/68.5 3500 lb. axle. The most critical measurement was the position of the spring mounts. On our axle, it’s 68.5 inches center-to-center – the second half of the axle listing. The next measurement was “hub face to hub face”, which we measured by checking the distance of the tires center-to-center. This was 85.5 inches, the first half of the axle listing. Lug pattern was next, and one I’m more used to. In this case, we were looking for an axle assembly with a 5 x 4.5 hub. Of course, we had to specify a replacement rated at 3500 pounds or better.
Oh, I should add that I was looking for a complete assembly because everything on the failed side was useless, due to the failure. And it was beginning to look like we’d be leaving our RV far from home for several weeks before it would see the road again, a prospect neither my wife or I were particularly pleased with. The entire experience, with (up to this point) no helpful solutions or advice provided for us, was really stressing us out.
Finally!
While my wife and I were searching for a local savior, we also reached out to friends on social media. A big shoutout to all of you who came to our aid with helpful advice. In addition, we spoke with our campground manager (luckily, a local campground had an empty space close to our point of failure and we were able to limp the trailer there) and asked for his referrals that he’d had experience with. The two shops he recommended, “A Automotive & Truck” (owned by Lloyd Cox and located in Franklin, NC) and “Anglin RV, Truck and Trailer” (owned by J.R. Anglin and located in Otto, NC) are the two that ultimately brought us a solution beyond what we could have expected. Lloyd told us he’d be glad to install whatever axle we supplied but he was so backed up it would be some time before he could do the work. J.R. went one better and suggested a solution I thought should have been suggested by the very first shop we went to – purchase an in-stock assembly and modify it to work.
I know how that may sound to some, but the modification was minimal (in my mind). J.R. found an 85/70 axle equipped with brake flange spindles, meaning we could install a new electric brake backing plate assembly and cap that with a new hub to complete the repair. The spring seats could be relocated from their current 70” spacing to the needed 68.5” spacing with little trouble. The only drawback was the repositioning of the wheels. They would ride about a quarter of an inch further in – but we had plenty of clearance to work with so I didn’t consider that a problem.
On the road again!
The Anglin team went even one step further in helping us get home. After the axle arrived and had been modified, he sent a team of two techs to install it on site. While they were here, they inspected the front axle to make sure it wouldn’t have any problems on the trip back to Florida. It’s owners like Lloyd and J.R. (and the team members that work for them), that restored my faith and provided me with hope that our overall reputation as true professionals may someday become the norm. To them, I owe my enduring gratitude.
And I want to leave you with this thought. Are you an Anglin or A Automotive kind of shop? Do you work for a shop like these? Remember, your reputation is OUR reputation. Make it a good one.
