Shackle Bearing Life

[berridge]

FYI I had a wet bolt kit installed on my 07 3075 at about 16K miles. The shackles were OK showing only a little wear but the nylon bushings were shot. I believe that once these bushings do go the wear on the shackles accelerates. It looks like this distance (16K miles) might be a good time to start inspecting the suspension.

[helmick]

Some of mine were longgated at 5,000 miles, they would have never made it to 16,000 miles.

[mhs4771]

Just had the MOR/ryde IS installed with 19K on the Monty, nylon bushing were still there, barely, so it would have only been a matter of time before problems. BTW, love the Disk brakes and everything seems to be riding smoother, even on I86 in the Souther Tier of NY.

[RickW]

Just ordered the wet bolt kit this weekend. Our last trip of the season is next week, another 800 miles. I will install the wet bolts over the winter. We currently have 30k miles on the trailer. Not sure what I will find when I take it apart.

[richfaa]

At 10K my OEM bushing were showing wear and we had the wet bolt kit installed. At @ 30K we had the MOr ryde IS system installed and they took everything off. I saved the wet bolt kit and it showed no wear.

[clarkandsheila]

I just had the Moryde wet bolt kit done at the dealer afew weeks ago. It was about three hours for them; we waited as we then took off on our trip.
My intention was to do it myself but I ran out of time, still needed some more jack stands as I only had 2 light duty ones and of course the trailer is about 8 miles from home so I got lazy.
I changed all the grease nipples to 90o units as several were almost not greasable with the straight nipples. I also bought a flex hose for my gun which will help in the future.

The shackle plates are several times the thickness of the originals. I guess we'll see how the whole thing holds up.

[stiles watson]

My nylon bushings and shackles were showing significant wear and distortion at 3000 miles when I changed to the wet bolts. particularly worn were the bolts and "Z" brackets at the Mor/ryde RE connection. New wet bolts, redesigned "Z" brackets, and thicker shackles were required to do the job.

[scattershot]

Me, too. Couldn't tell you the mileage, but my shackle actually broke on my 2006 2955RL. The spring jammed in such a way that I didn't notice anything wrong for a while. Sounds like it may be a chronic problem with the Montanas. Get 'em checked.

[HamRad]

Those little nylon or plastic bearings or whatever they are made of go bad almost immediately. We replaced our shackles with the HD ones that come with brass bearings. We replaced then at about 20K miles and that was probably 4 or 5 years ago. So far so good. Good luck, Dennis

[Art-n-Marge]

If you were able to go 16,000 miles you were lucky. At about 3,000 miles mine were already wearing out and the nylon bushings were messed up.

I'm glad I got mine done, but I also learned to improve how I tow my rig to try and prevent the stresses that cause this to fail so soon in the first place. I think how and where you drive may impact this. My short trips with lots of backing up and sharp turns probably didn't help.

[PapaBeav]

For those of you that still have the OEM shackles and bushings. Do yourself a favor and replace them as soon as you can with a wet bolt kit before major problems arise.

[mlh]

I have a fairly light 2001 2955, 9400 pounds dry weight. It came with 15 inch tires. I installed new shackles in 2008 after several trips 5000 mile trips to Wyoming and lots of short trips of 800 to 1000 miles. The shackles were in OK shape, not great shape. Some of the Nylon bushings were wore through but not all, and all of the medal parts were in good safe shape.
Lynwood
On edit
For those of you that still have the OEM shackles and bushings. Do yourself a favor and replace them as soon as you can with a wet bolt kit before major problems arise.
I agree with this 100%
I had good luck with a light camper. You may not.

[timandsusan]

Ditto on replacement. I did my wet bolt kit 2 years ago and my original bushings were shot--also shackles were elongated. I wonder--does the RV industry realize that we tow our rigs more than 50 miles a year and that industry standard nylon bushings will fail soon!
It is good that Keystone is putting the wetbolts on the newer Montanas--critical item that most RVers would miss in making a buying decision.

[washley1]

What is the typical cost of having wet bolts put on by a shop? DW can tell you that I am not the most reliable mechanic she ever met! I don't even know where to look to see if the OEM are going bad!