Broken suspension

I'm hoping for that.  I'll find out tomorrow.

Yipee-kayay! DONE. WOW that was a big job. I'll take it for a test tow tomorrow and then check it over to make sure nothing worked loose. Can't wait to get a larger air compressor for those air tools.

The rest of the rust was just surface rust so I wouldn't worry too much about it if you have a camper with springs. The pods have torsion suspensions.

I think the root cause here was undersized and/or defective springs. Seeing the new one next to the other 3 older springs (that are completely flat under load) makes it obvious all of them need to be replaced. One of them even has a slight bend on the upper leaf in the wrong direction. The new one has a noticeable bend upward like it should.

Which is why I took a deep breath - knowing how much labor was involved to change just the one broken spring - and ordered 3 more. These are all rated at 2600 pounds (10,400 total) so far more than the actual load of around 7000 pounds when it is ready for a trip. All new mounting bolts, too. I am re-using the u-bolts and tie plates although as I was removing a bunch of stuff yesterday I managed to snap one of the u-bolts. Ordered another today and that wasn't easy to find with the specs I needed.

Yesterday I picked up an air tool set to help with the labor, a good excuse. My air pump isn't big enough so that will need to be updated eventually, but it is enough to help a bit for now.

The adventure continues.

After multiple parts snafus everything arrived and I started on it today.  Of course after getting all the old bolts off I found that the U-bolt/tie plate kit I ordered fits with the spring but doesn't fit over the axle!  So I'll be reusing the old one.  So far I got the spring mounted but I ran out of daylight before I got the axle attached.

Got it on jack stands this afternoon on the damaged side.  Both wheels rubbed through the plastic above them but no other damage.  Possibly some abnormal wear on the tires but I need to compare them to the ones on the other side to be sure, later.  The springs have four leaves and the 2nd smallest snapped off where the smallest ends, some time in the past since the sheared edge was rusted.  That left a bend point for the 2 largest leaves where they both failed this weekend (no rust on the sheared edges).