How Much Can A TrailManor Take?

[Shandysplace]

How much pounding over broken-potholed road surfaces can the TM take before something serious breaks?

In the short 2000 miles we've travelled in our TM (over half of that back/forth to dealers for service), at least 10% of that or 200 hiles has been over broken potholed road surfaces. Petaluma is known as the pot hole capital of the world with very poorly maintained streets. So just to get from our home to the freeway the TM gets bounced around quite a bit for a few miles.

We just returned from a 900 mile round trip to Custom RV in Anaheim, CA from Petaluma, CA for annual maintenance. We decided to take I-5 over the Grapevine. You have three choices to LA from here; route 1 down the coast with many miles of tight twisting turns, 101 (which, like I-80, is in a poor state of repair) or I-5 over the Grapevine. We figured I-5 would be the shortest and would have the best road surface over the 900 mile round trip.

That turned out to be true, but anytime your route is also a major truck route and the 55mph speed limit we impose on ourselves because it is legally required and for maximum tire life, means staying in the slow right lane most of the time (the lane with the most damaged road surface because of the constant use by trucks), some of your trip is going to be a very rough ride.

The right lane of the Grapevine going up in either direction was in a severe state of repair with major concrete breaks and deep potholes for miles. We were very worried that our 3326 could not possibly survive such pounding. Yet on arriving at Custom RV and upon careful examination by their techs, all they found was the trim on the top edge of the wardrobe was slightly marred from bouncing on the floor (we put a piece of carpet there now).

Many of you on this forum have travelled many thousands of miles in your TM. We guess they must be really well built, since postings here of damage have usually been caused by out of balanced tires or some other issue--not the road surface. What has been your experience?

[ShrimpBurrito]

You can read about my experience with the TM on a rough road. Granted, however, it was in FAR worse condition than ANY paved road.....

http://www.trailmanorowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8100

Dave

[Bill]

We've done some pretty poor secondary roads (paved, but ...) in the reservation in northeastern Arizona. I'm thinking of Mexican Hat, Mexican Water, Monument Valley secondary roads, etc. And we've also done miles and miles of those endlessly-pounding concrete roads that still exist in various places across the country. And we've had pretty good luck. Not perfect, mind you, but pretty good. You asked about serious problems, but we've had only minor ones.

Stove grate bounces onto the floor. A few interior screws backed out. Toilet splashed (only once! we learned from that!). Lost a center-latch bolt, as Dave did. TP unrolls onto the floor (until we learned to either remove the roll, or flatten it).

After a day of that stuff, rather than waiting for problems to show themselves, I usually just walk around the TM on an inspection tour, with a screwdriver in hand.

Works for me.

Bill

[Gwenzilla]

Going over about a mile of a river rock road at Tuolumne River Resort certainly scrambled the contents of carry-aboard stuff in our trailer. Like Bill we had the stove grate hit the floor (we now bungee cord it before leaving anywhere), had lots of screws loosen up, had the interior overhead wire tray molding fall off the front shell section, and believe our TM now has many more squeeks then before that trip.

[Wavery]

We've had no particular damage but we did have the stove-top come off once (not just the grate). We now place a foam rubber block on the stove top. When folded down, the roof puts pressure on the foam block and keeps the stove-top in place.

Another trick that we learned is, we purchased a 12' x 2' roll of non skid counter material. It's a soft rubbery stuff that people put on shelves to keep things from sliding around (it almost feels sticky). We put that on the floor to keep things from moving around while towing (we have all vinyl floors). It works great. I had a hard emergency stop one time and I thought sure that everything would have slid forward in the trailer. Nothing budged and inch. :D

[lnussbau]

For the stove grate coming off, our dealer (Car Show) told us when we bought ours that putting a small pillow or some such on top of the stove would let the top shell press against the grate enough to keep it from bouncing off. We use one that was almost ready to be discarded -- it's about a foot and a half square, and about three inches thick in the middle.

As to rough roads, we've not done any off-roading, but there are some pretty rough paved roads in places we've been, and I've been on a Scout camp (and a few other places) with several miles of dirt roads (often wash-boarded) and we've seen a few other places that weren't exactly smooth. No damage, other than perhaps a loose screw or three. Of course we took it rather slow on those roads...

[PopBeavers]

In the beginning, my stove grate had clips underneath that held each of the four corner legs down tightly. This kept the grate on, but you could not wash under the grate.

Then the front two clips broke off and the grate still stayed in place but you could now wash under the grate by lifting the front.

Then the other two clips broke and now it is even easier to wash under the grate because we can lift it off. I use a bungee cord to hold it down.

Once a year I pop the entire top of the stove off to wash underneath. It is amazing how much crud manages to get down there.