Montana Axles - 2003

[Montana_2960]

I am a new Montana 5th wheel owner and we have just begin enjoying our RV experience. Heard recently from a fellow RVer that has a 2003 Montana that he had to have his axles replaced under factory warranty. We are planning a cross country trip but are a little afraid of having a similar problem. Can anyone help?
cjleines

[CountryGuy]

cjleines

Welcome to the forum

You do not say what year Montana you have. Keystone changed the supplier for axles sometime last year. They did have trouble with AlKo Kobler axles, now they are shipping with Dexter.

Do a search here on the forum, go to the top of the page. You will find a number of discussions and threads on just this subject.

You need to climb around under your unit and discover what axle you have. That will tell you a lot.

Cheers and enjoy that cross country trip!

[Montana_2785]

cjleines,

We are also new Montana owners. We just picked up a 2002 3575rl. I have also noticed quite a few issues with the Al Ko Kober axles. I, for one, do not intend to baby them. If and when they give trouble, then I'll decide what to do. The failure mode that I have seen is to gradually lose alignment and the crown on the axle, not catastrophic failure so I'll just monitor them. I had to re-align the axles on my previous TT as well. Same cause, axles were too close to their maximum rating to hold up over time. Since I got used, I don't have any warranty to cover it so it will be my own nickle. Besides, if I replace them, it may be an opportunity to do some suspension upgrades. If they are garbage, I'll not spend any $$$ to put the same garbage back on.

As an aside, you may want to upgrade the spring shackles and bolts. I had to do it to my previous TT and I see that others here have also had to do it. For what ever reason, Keystone seems to have used the thin 1/4" spring shackles. These just will not hold up even on the much lighter (6500lb) TT I used to have. The bolt holes will stretch out to an oval and eventually break. They also use nylon bushings that will wear through. Upgrade to the heavier 1/2" spring shackles, get bolts with greasable fittings and use brass bushings. I had those on my old TT for 7 years with moderate to heavy use and they are still going strong.

I took a look at the Al Ko Kober web site( http://www.al-kousa.com/pdf/5200_6_7.pdf ) and looked up the specs for various axles. I haven't had mine long enough to scoot under to find the actual axle model I have. I know I'm supposed to have 6000lb axles.

If you look at the web site, you will see that the 5200lb and 6000lb axles both have 3" diameter x .180" nominal wall thickness or optional with 1/4" wall thickness. The 7000lb axle is standard with 3" diameter tubing, 1/4" wall thickness.

So, What is the difference between the .180" and .25" axle walls between the different "axles"? Are they the same material? Different heat treating??? Different ratings for the same thing and hope no one notices???

It is curious to say the least. But I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

One thing I will need to check as soon as we get warm enough weather to do maintenance is to check the brakes. One of them makes a really loud noise sometimes when braking. I wonder if too much grease has been pumped in and gotten all over the inner "works" of one wheel. And the ammeter on my Jordan brake controller isn't reading as much current as I think it should. I'm not sure that all the magnets are working. No biggie, but they need looking after...

Eric

[CountryGuy]

Eric,

Great post.

Some owners have reported that they have greese on the brakes even tho they have NEVER greased the bearings on units (that have that easy lube type axle).

We happen to be one of those owners. Al is not fond of those easy lube type things, so he never used them, after about 6,000 the brakes were SCREAMING. Unit serviced and grease found to be on the brakes. Came out of the factory that way, sad to say, or the dealer lubed before we took delivery, and did not tell us.

I may not have total understanding of this axle, easy lube, brake stuff, but I do understand this, it is easy to put too much grease in there with that easy lube. That grease gets on the brakes. Our brakes were screaming, we had them checked, they had a lot of grease on them, and we did not grease anything in that first year.

Carol

[sreigle]

Cjleines, if the topic line is a clue, yours is a 2003. Thus you have the Alko-Kober axles, like ours.

If your tires are properly inflated, you are not overloaded on the axles, and you experience severe tire wear on the inside tread, then you may have an axle alignment problem. We had that and Keystone had Alko-Kober replace them for us.

I'd like to pass on a lesson we learned the hard way. Make sure you have identical tires on both ends of the axle. I know this relates to load range and tire size but I'm not sure about tread pattern. Our Montana came with load range D tires, which do meet the weight specs in the size ours uses. When we needed a replacement tire on the road in a location where there was no Goodyear dealer I bought a used tire in the same size but load range E. Since our spare was quite worn on the inside tread I had this used tire mounted on the axle. I later learned this causes a different drag on that end of the axle and eventually caused that axle to go out of alignment. We paid $150 to have both axles re-aligned. This applies not to Alko-Kober axles but to all RV axles, as I understand it. We've only put about 2k miles on the Montana since then so it's hard to tell for sure but the tires seem to be wearing well. Time will tell just how well. If your axles are a problem you'll likely see abnormal wear by the 2k miles mark, to some noticeable degree.

As for the ultra-lube, I'm convinced now that my dealer is correct when he told me 'two squirts per year' even when fulltiming. I put four in ours and when we had him check the brakes this past summer he told me I'm overgreasing and reiterated the two squirts per year. Much more than that and you do risk blowing out the rear seal and getting grease on the linings and drums. The tendency is to think more is better but in this case, two squirts per year. I've become a believer in this and will give it two squirts per year and check the brakes every other year. The dealer repacked the bearings at the same time he did the brakes.

By the way, after about 20k miles the brake linings were only half worn. The linings did have heat stress cracks and the magnets were severely worn and had to be replaced. The dealer told me I had the brakes set too aggressively. I had the Prodigy set at about 8.0. I backed that off to 7.0 and found stopping power just about as good and hopefully not damaging the magnets and linings.