Yup, not a good day 1 of most recent trip. Currently sitting in Albuquerque NM with RV at a Freightliner shop for the foreseeable future. Driver side steer wheel shredded and took out the electrical bay. No power steering, no dash, no slide controls, no levelers, cant start engine. Wound up partially in the median of I40 with patio side outside dually off the ground. Luckily we didn't roll it, and I had just swapped out the blue ox tow bar that bound up if not perfectly flat for the NSA ready brute that had enough rotational give in the attachment points to release the toad Even at the angle we came to rest at. Recovery tow dude was a miracle worker and managed to get hooked up and drove it into the bottom of the median without rolling rv and himself and was able to get it out. Once Freightliner finishes its repairs it will need to go to a body shop for their work, so we are grounded for a while. Luckily no injuries and didn't cause any accidents as it went from the right lane all the way to the median. TPMS was active, no warnings, and all tire readings were in specs and consistent across the board with the usual running temps and PSI. 19k miles on this one, the front right tire looks perfectly normal and healthy. Scratching my head on why this one would have blown, rear blowouts a year ago were related to Freightliner valve stem recall and I can understand why they went.
OK Scott, you get credit for the inspriation and identification of the problem. Thank you for posting the story, pics, and all the info. I armored the front of the wheel well and since I needed to brace the frame I built for it anyway, I added protection for the bottom of the bay to prevent damage from road hazards. This is 14ga steel so I think it will do the job. It took me around 8 hours over several days because its been hot and I had covid the whole time which didn’t help but this gave me something to do. If I had a real shop and a ready-to-build design, it would take around four hours to do this job. Materials were around $100.
What I had to work with: HWH added a lot of stuff when they installed Active Air and their framing here prevented things from being square and level, but I went with what was there.
My additional framing
The new wheel well piece and the underside protection - 14ga steel, 1 1/2”x 1/8” angle.
Final product. It’s not as clean as I would have liked and I had to give up on square and level, but its done and it will do the job. It also protects the Active Air stuff better.
View from the front with road-hazard protection/bracing in place.
The wheel well piece is 31”x20”. If I were doing it again I’d make my life easier and cut it down to 30.5”x 18”, my hindsight being pretty good. But by the time I figured it out I had Covid and I dont have a power sheer at home, so I went with 31x20.
Also I only welded stuff that wasn’t attached to the coach because I didn’t want to disconnect everything, and I also want it all removable, although I hope I’ll never have to do that. It would get beat up if I had a blow-out but it’s fairly stout and it would protect the nerve center so that works for me.
After Scott‘s experience and that story
@Jim posted about the head-on in PA a few days ago (don’t know the details but it was compelling), I decided this is a necessity and perhpas the issue is worth a visit to the NHTSA website. Losing a front tire is bad enough; losing steering too is not an acceptable risk. Before Scott’s original post on this, it never occurred to me that the essential electronics were so vulnerable.
