OrangeKid -
Quote:
|
The information suggests that tires fail much more often than axles. I submit that tires are the limit.
|
There is a lot of truth in what you say. The failure of a tire is pretty obvious. By contrast, I don't know what the failure mechanism of an axle is. Maybe it just clunks down on the stops, and you lose the spring action. Maybe you can drive hundreds of miles without knowing anything has failed - until things start to shake apart because there are no working springs on the axle. Not good, but not immediately catastrophic, either. All I know is, I don't want to go there - it is sure to be expensive. However, it seems reasonable that the axle manufacturer puts a weight limit on the axle for a reason. The fact that I don't know the reason, doesn't mean the limit can be ignored.
Quote:
|
The manufacturer should not offer options that allow the weight limits of the trailer axle or tires to be exceeded.
|
In this minor point, I have to disagree. The RV manufacturer can offer lots of options, and that is good. For example, if the owner is going to do a lot of dry camping, and he can opt for a 40-gallon water tank instead of a 20-gallon tank, that's a great thing. There can be a whole fleet of options, but it is up to the owner to understand that he can't have all the options at the same time. He should know that if he loads up his rig with 180 extra pounds of water, then he better unload 180 pounds of something else.
The problem is that manufacturers don't make this information readily available to the owners. The owners don't know that these trades have to be made. As a result, it is easy to overload an RV, without even realizing it.
The weight rating methods for RVs - all of them, not just TMs - are a peeve of mine. I don't like the way things are done, and I admit it. But whether we like it or not, the burden of knowing the actual loaded weight comes down on the owner, and frankly, I think the owner ought to be knowledgable enough to deal with it. An RV is not a little red wagon, it is a complex machine.
And that is one of the values of a forum like this - someone on the forum knows these obscure things.
Bill