Archive → November, 2010
New wheels for the RV
To make sure we didn’t have any more blowouts on the RV, I wanted to transition to a higher weight capacity tire. Unfortunately, they’re not readily available on a 14” wheel, so I decided to upgrade to 15” wheels, which are standard on Trailmanors starting in 2009. The old and new wheels:
The new wheels wont fit in the wheel well, so I had to add spacers between the axle and chassis to increase the clearance. The spacer is the darker piece of square tubing in the center of the photograph:
I tack welded the axle to the spacer and the spacer to the chassis:
Once the spacers were installed, I was able to install the larger wheels. We now have a weight limit of 2560 pounds per tire, as opposed to 1700 pounds per tire with the 14” wheels.
In the process of hooking everything back up, I discovered that one of the brakes wasn’t working. I ordered new magnets, and when I took the hub apart, found that the wires had been broken by the strain relief clip.
Anyway, I replaced the magnet (the bar-of-soap sized thing below the axle hole). It was a real mess, but it gave me a chance to see how the brakes worked, which was interesting.
