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August 7 , 2005
I've gotten quite a few emails recently from folks who
are saying they're glad to see me getting back to work on our
Trailer project....
I am too , but this is a really expensive project for me and Millie
so its going to be a long-term situation here.
Neither of us make that much at our jobs ...so I'm going into
big-time credit card debt here.
And that's not a good thing ....
But even so , this project is very important too me ...so I guess
we'll deal with the debt problems later.
I've run into an interesting and
disturbing snag in our project.
A few days ago I called the folks up at Dexter Axles to ask their
engineers where to correctly locate the leaf springs on the axles we
bought.
I needed this information so that after installing the springs I
could take the measurements between them for the sizing of the
frames cross-members .
So, Dexter's people gave me the spring location info...and after
that I asked them about the true weight carrying capacity of the
Axles I bought .
I told them that I picked up 3 axles , hubs ,wheels, tires and such
from one of their licensed dealers...and gave them the batch number
on the axles .
They looked up the number and told me they were 6000 lb. axles.....
I said ...wait a minute here...the dealer I bought the axles from
told me that the combination of the axles , heavy-duty hubs ,springs
,wheels & tires actually gave me a 7000 lb. per axle capacity.
Dexter told me ...Sorry, but that doesn't matter because the Axle is
a 6000 lb.one and nothing is going to change that fact.
I was furious ...and called six robblees up ,telling them I spent a
fortune on these axles ,wheels etc plus the shipping to Alaska and
didn't appreciate it one damn bit that instead of having 3-axles
that added up to a 21,000 lb capacity ...I now had only 18,000 lbs.
They told me that everything they had ever heard about this sort of
thing ...was that I really did have a combo that added to 7000 lbs.
per axle.
So I called Dexter back up and told them what six robblees had said
....
They said Nope you've only have 6000 lb. axles....
I called Six Robblees up again and told them about this and they
said they'd get in touch with Dexter and find out the straight poop
on this.
Eventually they called me back and told me that the D60 Dexter axle
could with the addition of heavy duty Hubs be considered a 7000 lb.
axle.
Which made me think I was hearing a bunch of bullshit ...because the
D60 is a 6000 lb.axle and nothing more.
So ....I've decided to just order another axle setup to get us back
up to a more realistic weight carrying capacity.
The way I'm thinking about this is... if it turns out Dexter is
right ...the 4-axle setup will give us 24,000 lbs....
And if Six Robblees is right I'll have 28,000 lbs....
But ,I'll just build the trailer thinking that I have a total of
24,000 lbs to work with ....
When I first started thinking about building a big 5th wheel
trailer....if someone had said I'd be building a trailer with
approx. 18,000 lbs capacity ....I would have thought that was a LOT!
But after researching the companies that build the higher end 5th
wheels I've found that their 'Dry-weight' ( what you can put into
the completed trailer weight wise...clothes , food tools etc. etc.
etc. before you've reached the maximum carrying capacity of the
rig)....isn't very much .
And...Those trailers are made out of fiber glass and aluminum
....not lots of wood like ours will be.
So , I'm really glad to find out the truth about our axles.
I would have built her thinking I had 3000 lbs more then I really
did to work with.
But even so it would have been nice to be told the real truth about
this from the get go....now we'll have to fork out approx. $1200.00
for the extra axle setup.
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