I was a little concerned about using the old axle and brakes on the trailer and I thought it would be a good idea to upgrade to a new 3500-pound Dexter axle. Then I thought, “If we’re gonna install a new axle, why don’t we go all the way and install disc brakes too.” Of course, that would require an electric over hydraulic actuator to operate the brakes.
It’s a good thing I have some friends in the industry who helped me out. So, our vintage trailer project got a set of disc brakes from Kodiak, an actuator from Tucson Brakes, and a brand new set of tires.
We’ve got our axle off and I’m gonna show you what the culprit is here. If you’ll notice on the old axle, we’ve only got a 3/4-inch diameter spindle, whereas our new axle, I believe it’s a 1 and 1/16 inch diameter on the spindle. And then you’ll also notice the new axle tube is much bigger in diameter than the old axle and, combined, that’s gonna give us our 3500-pound rating on our new axle. So we’ve got the old one off, we’re gonna take a real close look at our springs and make sure there’s absolutely no problems with the leaf springs, and then we’re gonna go ahead and install our new axle.
In hindsight, I’m not sure if I would tackle a project this big again but now that it’s over I wouldn’t change a thing. It gave me the opportunity to work on a project with Tyler which was great.
He did a wonderful job seeing it through to the end.
Happy camping from Mark Polk of RV Education 101
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