Tire rubbing fender . Looking for advice

    I did a lot of research on the r pods and was aware of the axles bending and I made sure there was no visual tilt to ether wheel or uneven tire wear signs before purchasing this one . I didn't read of the rubber cords being much of a problem . 

  We have an appointment to have it looked at by the dealer that we bought it from next week .  We are still super excited and can't wait to get out in it . It's just going to be a little later than we hoped but that is ok . 

   Has anyone purchased and installed the axle them self .  

                    

I don't think an axle shop can help get a low cost fix in this case.  You are not seeing the more common bent axle problem others have reported. That would show up as negative camber at the wheels and/or an axle tube that has lost its crown, neither of which you have. 

In this case there are a couple of other possibilities besides damaged rubber cords. One is that it is possible that the axle tube has been twisted, although as I said I think that unlikely because tubes are very strong in resisting torsional stress. If you want to exclude that possibility comparing the angles of a couple of straight edges clamped to the flats at each end of the axle would probably work.  

The other possibility is that the torsion rod inserted into the cords has twisted, in which case the fix is the same as for the cords themselves: new axle. If it were me and I was stuck putting a new axle under the trailer I wouldn't want to put back the same marginal part that couldn't handle the load in the first place, I'd go for a heavier axle.  But that's me. 

An inexpensive fix which you might find acceptable would be add about a 1/2 to 1 inch axle riser on the slide side. 1 inch height difference is pretty high but 1/2 inch is not at all unusual, my 179 is about 3/8 IIRC. After all, the trailer slide side is heavier so it will ineveitably site lower.

Good luck with the dealer and FR, please let us know what you end up doing. 

Here is an interesting article on the pros and cons of the two axle types:

I suspect that keeping the ride height lower is probably the main reason FR uses torsion axles on the rPods. If you're going to lift the trailer anyway with a lift kit a spring axle might work ok. 

Sorry about the mmmissing "m"....

For a mechanical designer these considerations are important but assuming the designer has done his homework they are pretty much hypothetical for the trailer owner.  Has anyone heard of someone who has bent the frame on their rPod in the way suggested by the stress model in the article?  If not, FR/Lippert have spread the moment load from the torsion axle to the frame out enough that it hasn't been a problem. 

Pretty much everything in engineering involves tradeoffs. Having the low ride height probably won out in their evaluation of the options, and in theory anyway the designers have adressed the drawbacks so they don't become our problems as owners. 

Where we unquestionably do have problems is the axles themselves. Here the designers have pushed the limits a bit too far IMHO. We have the known problem with bent axles which is worsened by the inboard mounting points to the frame. That can be adressed fairly easily by axle reinforcement which a couple of us have done now in different ways. 

Now we have tent2pod's issue which apparently is not a bent axle. So far we're just speculating about what it actually is, so I'm looking forward to a report once tent2pod gets to the bottom of it...

Re axle replacement,  I have one other reason why i would go with a heavier axle if faced with replacement. Better braking. I think the braking action on the 3500 lb axle brake assemblies is marginal for my rig. Even at full voltage output from my brake controller I'm not able to get my trailer wheels to lock up when following the setup procedure specified for my Prodigy P2, and that is with brand new propery burnished brakes. For sure you back off from that point so you don't actually get lockup, but ideally you want to be just short of that point in an emergency stop. 

The eTrailer tech I spoke to said this was pretty common with travel trailers. Anyone else have the same issue? 

The 5200 lb axles have 12x2 inch brakes vs the 3500 lb's 10x2.25. If I did my math right that should result in about 12% more stopping power.