Montana Owners Club - Keystone Montana 5th Wheel Forum - View Single Post

dieselguy · 03-30-2014, 03:16 PM

Since it finally started warming up, I decide to swap out my worn shear springs that MorRyde sent me free of charge late last Fall. I hooked the fiver up to my truck (makes things easier and safer) and jacked up one side of the frame at a time using two bottle jacks one in front of the axles and one behind. I then stuck a couple of floor jacks under each axle with just a bit of pressure to hold the assembly in place. I removed the tires, then removed nuts from the inner spring shackles and the bolts and nuts from the shear springs themselves. I was thinking this was going way too easy as once unbolted, the shear spring pried right out the bottom and lay on the ground ... shortly I ran into quite a surprise. The super dooper wet bolt and bronze bushing setup we now have on many of our fivers was in a pitiful shape. My average traveling weight is only @10600# on the axles and being maintenance minded, I grease the wet bolts Spring, mid Summer, and late Fall ... The bolts themselves were OK, yet all 8 of the spring eye bronze bushings were way worn. You can see the issue in the accompanying photos with the bolt just stuck thru the bushings . I ended up buying a set of new bushings and replacing all 8 in the spring eyes. The 4 bushings in the shear spring hardware for whatever reason checked OK. The last shocker was when I was examining one of my old shear springs. I was traveling on way borrowed time as I could almost pull the rubber in two off the shear spring as seen in the last photo. You get into a sense of complacency with all they hype about the wonders of the rubber shear springs and their ride quality as well as the supposed longevity of the wet bolt setup ... until you pull it all apart someday. http://s113.photobucket.com/user/imp...0Spring%202014
The photo captions fade unless you move your mouse a bit while looking at the slide show. It won't hurt to crawl under your unit every so often and check out the rubber shear springs. There's an easy inspection write up on the MorRyde website. My fiver was beginning to squat a bit more so on one side.

03-30-2014, 03:16 PM	#1
dieselguy Montana Master Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Haysville Posts: 4,261 M.O.C. #3085	MorRyde Shear Spring Replacement Since it finally started warming up, I decide to swap out my worn shear springs that MorRyde sent me free of charge late last Fall. I hooked the fiver up to my truck (makes things easier and safer) and jacked up one side of the frame at a time using two bottle jacks one in front of the axles and one behind. I then stuck a couple of floor jacks under each axle with just a bit of pressure to hold the assembly in place. I removed the tires, then removed nuts from the inner spring shackles and the bolts and nuts from the shear springs themselves. I was thinking this was going way too easy as once unbolted, the shear spring pried right out the bottom and lay on the ground ... shortly I ran into quite a surprise. The super dooper wet bolt and bronze bushing setup we now have on many of our fivers was in a pitiful shape. My average traveling weight is only @10600# on the axles and being maintenance minded, I grease the wet bolts Spring, mid Summer, and late Fall ... The bolts themselves were OK, yet all 8 of the spring eye bronze bushings were way worn. You can see the issue in the accompanying photos with the bolt just stuck thru the bushings . I ended up buying a set of new bushings and replacing all 8 in the spring eyes. The 4 bushings in the shear spring hardware for whatever reason checked OK. The last shocker was when I was examining one of my old shear springs. I was traveling on way borrowed time as I could almost pull the rubber in two off the shear spring as seen in the last photo. You get into a sense of complacency with all they hype about the wonders of the rubber shear springs and their ride quality as well as the supposed longevity of the wet bolt setup ... until you pull it all apart someday. http://s113.photobucket.com/user/imp...0Spring%202014 The photo captions fade unless you move your mouse a bit while looking at the slide show. It won't hurt to crawl under your unit every so often and check out the rubber shear springs. There's an easy inspection write up on the MorRyde website. My fiver was beginning to squat a bit more so on one side.