Trailer maintenance

I made a little to-go kit for my tiny HF folding trailer. Pretty sure it has everything to completely disassemble/reassemble the trailer on the side of the road along with registration paperwork taped inside. When lending the trailer out, I hand over this kit along with a spare tire and they should be good to go

 

I found this to be the case when I re decked my deckover trailer. I used green treated lumber and butted them tight expecting they would shrink - and shrink they did. 1/8 or more gap now. If the lumber were seasoned it obviously would shrink as much, but mine came straight from the lumber yard.

 

Yeah...you can really tell how green/wet the treated boards are since they're twice as heavy.
I'd have the yard deliver my boards and they came pretty much all the same and were on a single pallet so they were pretty consistent.
It Sucked Hauling them from the driveway to the backyard when they're that heavy!!

 

You ain't kidding. I had to buy 4 2x8x16 boards and one 2x10x16 and it sucked getting them out to and into the truck by myself. Luckily my son was home to help me carry them to the back of the driveway where the trailer was.

 

Hmm, good thoughts.

Well I've wondered if there's a way to do away with all of it, short of just putting a normal trailer axle under there. But I don't understand enough of the inner workings to know what I can & can't mess with. I'll just plan on counting how many turns it takes to get the nut off, and try to maintain the preload.

Thanks!

 

IMO you need the ring gear to sling the oil so it gets in the tubes and to the bearings.

 

The bearings are sealed, though. I thought I read when I first researching this that with such an old truck, they weren't sealed bearings and the differential fluid lubed them, but when I pulled the axle shafts, they had sealed bearings on them, and I replaced them with sealed bearings. I'm not convinced I need oil out there at the ends of the axle tubes.

Either way, I want enough oil in the diff to keep the gears cool and slippery, and that means fixing the pinion seal leak. I got the old one out last night and will get a new one ordered, and I counted how many turns to get the nut off. Sounds like that many, plus maybe another half turn, will be the ballpark right preload. I think this diff is tough...It had been run for who knows how long with low, old, crusty oil. There was all kinds of debris in there. Not metal chunks, almost like dried, crusty bits of worn out oil, if that's even possible. I cleaned things out as well as I could. Now it's got new axle bearings, oil, and soon a seal to hold that oil it...hopefully it's good for a while. Don't really like spending all this time and money on a beat to crap 1969-ish trailer that just came along as part of the purchase of my slide-in camper. It's nice to have the trailer, but I wasn't looking for a trailer...and now it's being a pain!

So far it's still worth it to me to have the trailer, but any more maintenance and I may just unload it.

 

Cool. Good luck. Didn't realize those were sealed bearings.

 

https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls

Here is a very useful website if you don’t already know about it. I recently found this website very helpful while getting some recall repairs done on our travel trailer. Originally I was only aware of one recall that pertained to our TT which was for a connection point and o-ring on the manifold for the Dometic stove. I was asked by the repair shop for the recall number and didn’t have it on hand so I had to do a little research since the paper copy of this notice was lost in the chaos of moving out of state. I discovered this site on a Jayco forum and when I typed in my VIN there was actually two more recalls that I wasn’t aware of, one being the propane regulator and another for the rear roof access ladder that on some models actually blocked the emergency exit window from opening more than a few inches. Luckily ours was not affected by this one but both LP related recalls could be very dangerous if we weren’t aware of them. We only ever got one notice from Jayco about the Dometic stove recall. It affected over 20,000 serial numbers on various models both older and newer than our TT. Why this wasn’t fixed before it was sold if they were aware of the recall is beyond me but I didn’t receive the notice until about a year after it was purchased. I will be using this website to search the VIN on any vehicle or trailer prior to purchase in the future. Hope this helps!
https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls