Yet another mishap with our axles – what is going on?!?

Oh no! About a half-hour after we left the Vancouver area headed east towards the windy mountainous road that is Hwy 3 a truck pulled alongside us and pointed at our rig. We knew that meant something was wrong so we pulled to the shoulder and were horrified to see that a third wheel was smoking badly. That meant we had another bearing that was failing and would lose our wheel shortly. It had already happened twice this year!!

So we sat in the truck and looked for a repair shop in the nearby town of Langley. We are once again SO LUCKY that this happened near a large town instead of up in the mountains where we were headed!

We found a place that specializes in springs and axles and called them to say what had happened and we were on our way to them. We limped down the highway shoulder and off at the next exit and had to go about 10 more miles to get to the repair shop.

We didn’t bother calling a tow truck because the previous two times the tow truck said there’s nothing they can do except escort us limping to a repair place. So, we limped on our own this time. About half-way to the repair shop, on a suburban road, the wheel fell off and we had to stop so Jeff could go retrieve it. We held up traffic a bit but there wasn’t much so they were able to get past us.

With wheel retrieved we limped the rest of the way at about 20 mph and finally pulled into the repair shop. Gerry, the owner, said they weren’t real busy and he could get right on it and we should have it back the next day.

However, shortly after we left the trailer with him and went in search of a motel he called. He was very unhappy with the way the previous repair shop had ‘fixed’ the rear axle (this time was the front axle) as they had lengthened it with a welded ‘sleeve’. He said this was not good as the axle couldn’t flex like it should. We headed back to the shop to get a better explanation and ended up replacing both axles. He did replace both with higher rated axles, the originals were 5200 pounds each. The rear axle was raised to a 6000 pound. Now we have two 7000 pound axles!

So, we got a cheap motel for the day, hung around and got the trailer back late the next day. We stayed at an RV park in Langley and headed out the next morning. So, our trip was delayed by 2 days but it could have been so much worse!

I didn’t take pictures this time, but the two previous stories about our wheel problems, here and here, include pictures.