September 6th - Rotating Tires and Slide out Reinforcement

Today I decided it was a good day to rotate the tires on Marge. I try to do this about every 9,000 miles. I can only rotate them front to back because I only have two jacks and two jack stands to lift one side of the trailer at a time.  Since I was getting all dirty it was also a good time for me to crawl under Marge and inspect the frame reinforcement work which was just completed a couple of weeks ago.

I will honestly say I was shocked to see how much metal they had added to the trailer frame. Here is a picture of two of the five six inch tall "C" channel rails they welded to the frame from one side to the other. The arrows with black borders point to the new metal. The arrow with the red border points to the factory installed two inch cross member in this area of the trailer, which was clearly inadequate.

There are three other six inch "C" channel cross members welded further back from the ones in the picture toward the rear of the trailer. All of these are to support the weight and movement of the two opposing slide outs. 

When I pulled off the wheels on each side I also found three two inch box metal supports welded in three places. These supports were welded in where the two six inch stacked box metal frame parts meet. Here is a picture with arrows pointing to the new reinforcement metal.

I am sure this work has added well over a hundred pounds to the frame but it should not flex anymore when the slides go in and out. Apparently Carriage frames are not as rigid as they claimed. In their defense we have dragged this trailer over 44,000 miles since purchasing it. Use takes a toll.

I torqued all the lug nuts so Marge should be good to go to Albuquerque in a few weeks after she's washed and tanks filled.