The Springs Fiasco: Wagontown Rest Area, WY
“They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to leave their job when they damn-well choose.”
Solomon went in for leaf spring replacement on Friday, at the only trailer place in Cheyenne that could do the work this week, with the only springs they could find that would fit. There’s a lot of trust you have to put in the shop doing something like this. RV suspensions are not complicated, but they are different from other vehicles in some important ways.
So when we picked up Solomon at day’s end, the springs were indeed replaced, but they looked kind of wrong. It didn’t seem quite right, but we didn’t know enough about suspensions to dispute it. Figuring they were the experts, and it would sort itself out with a little breaking in, we took it back to camp and readied to travel the next morning.
As we headed west I checked the things out at every stop, and became increasingly concerned. The front axle springs appeared to be straightening out, as if they were overloaded, and the rear axle springs were doing nothing. I knew enough to know that’s not correct, in fact it’s dangerous. I also knew that a broken leaf spring can be catastrophic, so avoiding that was important. Finally I called the trailer shop that did the work and they asked for pictures, so we stopped at the next rest area to look it over. As it turned out, that was our last stop for the night.
I started making phone calls, and indeed spent the next several hours either on the phone, under the RV, or both. The details are un-fun to recall, so I’ll give the summary.
We found a mobile RV repair guy who came out in about 90 minutes. We thought the springs looked wrong because of an installation issue, but after going over every bolt on there we determined that no, the suspension was installed (sufficiently) correctly, but the new springs were too long.
The only way to fix that is to get the correct springs, which would take a week to order.
We didn’t feel safe towing Solomon on these wrong springs, for fear of breaking one and getting stuck on the side of the road (again?).
The shop in Cheyenne offered to fix it, but there’s nowhere to stay in Cheyenne because of Frontier days, so we couldn’t go back and get it resolved.
It was 8pm and getting dark, when we concluded that we were going to be here for the night regardless, and we would regroup in the morning. It was a noisy night, hemmed in by trucks, but at least we were somewhat out of the way and could open all the slides.
The next morning was Sunday, which made finding help even harder. While we felt anxious about rolling on these wrong springs the remaining 90 miles to Rawlins where we have our next reservations, there appeared to be no other option to get Solomon there. You can’t flat-tow an RV this size, because it’s already as tall as a semi trailer, and almost as long. New springs were a week away. The old springs are back in Cheyenne, which is full. So we decided to have it towed, because if a spring did break on the way, they’d be right there to patch it together. If a spring breaks while we’re towing we’d have to wait roadside for at least an hour before help arrives.
So we called a service out of Rawlins, and they rolled the largest heavy wrecker we’d ever seen to bring Solomon in. We watched our home get hitched up, and drove behind our own RV all the way to Rawlins. It was incredibly strange, but safe. We stopped at the towing company shop in town, paid the bill, and moved Solomon over to our truck as their wrecker wouldn’t fit in the RV park. They followed us there in a pickup just in case, but in the end it was fine. We now have two weeks to re-do the replacement with correct parts, hopefully installed correctly too!
