Mistake made—lesson learned—Lippert helps out

[mrcomer]

While at the 2011 National Rally in Goshen I asked Pam with Lippert Components if they would take a look at my leaf springs and let me know if there are any problems. As it turns out we had a couple of flat springs but also had a ruined Equa-flex unit. Bud told me that it looked as if I had not greased any of the wet bolts that I had installed 2 years earlier. He was right, I had not and it is going to cost me. The bushings in the Equa-flex failed and the unit would have failed and possibly caused us much heartache had this not been caught. I ignorantly figured since we do not put a lot of miles on our rig (less than a 1,000 per year) that I could get away with just the grease that was installed when I had the wet bolt kit installed. Well like I said, that was two years ago and I was wrong. Lucky for us Jerry with Lippert was able to squeeze us in during the week while we were at the Rally. While he was working on the leaf springs he also noticed that some shocks had busted so they replaced those too. I said lucky because Lippert was slammed with work before, during and after the Rally so how this worked out for us I do not know for sure but we are very thankful for their efforts and support. Pam, Bud, Jerry, Russ and the rest of the folks at Lippert were all great to deal with and I couldn’t be more pleased.

BTW, I also picked up a set of the self adjusting brakes. I’ll be putting those on at the end of the season. I’ll also make sure to inspect my bearing and grease everything while the wheels are off the ground.

 

[TandT]

So which is worse? A neglected wet bolt such as you have, or a dry bolt such as I have. One would have to think that having any grease on a wet bolt is better than a dry bolt.
I have wanted the wet bolts for a while, but have not pulled the trigger.
Hearing that wet bolts can get into bad shape this quickly, really makes me worry about not having anything at all.

 

[mrcomer]

Well with the dry bolts you have a plastic or teflon bearing of sorts. I suppose they to will go bad but cannot even pretend to give you a mileage rating for them. I really think the wet bolts are the way to go as long as you keep them greased. I kow I will from now on.

 

[slmayor]

I went to the Reico Never -Fail bushings. We're testing to see if they never fail...LOL Knowing how things get over-looked and put off, we thought it the safer choice for us. If you look at the video for the Correct Track system on Reico's web site, those are my bushings with about 6000 miles on them. The bronze bushing is completely worn through.

 

[caissiel]

I had the previous trailer for 13 years and replaced many springs and only the first set of spring did the teflon bushing on the spring was warn to the metal. I am getting ready to have to change springs before worrying about teflon wear. It makes changing springs on the fly much easier by just having teflon bushings and as I can see from the author, one less problem to worry about. And as soon as I see wear on the Center Point Trailair equalizer its going to for a standard equalizer, as I see this happening soon, My previous unit had over 80K on it and I was satisfied with the maintenace requirements other then tires.
For me keeping it simple has been my philosophy for years, and everything we add just makes more to worry about.
One more thing, balancing tires will surely add to the life of the spring suspension system.