[JPHarris]

Originally Posted by rverdlm

OK, let's get back to discussing the issue at hand! What failed and why. Looking at the pictures I see 2 things that have bothered me. One, the weld did not fail. The tubing itself was punctured.

I believe that the tubing was weakened when the spring hanger was welded.

The other thing I see is that unlike my frame the bottom of the frame does not look like it is straight across, but rather that it goes up in the area of the spring hanger. Maybe it's some kind of optical illusion! In any case this failure required some extreme forces.

It is the way the picture was taken, optical illusion. The frame does indeed go straight across. Extreme forces? none that I'm aware of, normal potholes, YES, overloading? not the 3 times I've had it weighed.

People say "my car/pickup never failed" that is a red herring! Designing a frame for an RV is totally different. The designer must compromise between strength and weight. Sure they could design a frame that would never fail under any load, but then it couldn't be towed with any pickup. None of us can possibly know how this trailer was towed/treated/loaded.

I under stand it can't be designed like a car or truck but they could put a little reinforcement in the stress areas without adding much weight to the rig. I would much rather have a stronger frame than granite counter tops.

This being the Internet anyone can post/say anything. When someone on here says "I never speed, never run over loaded, never went on horrible roads, never ran over a curb at 60 mph, etc we have no way of knowing if that is true or not. We should not get overly exorcize defending the owner or the manufacturer because we do not have enough info to defend either one.

I don't much care what you believe. When I made the original post it was because I wanted people to go out and look at their frames/welds/spring hangers/axles and what not to make sure they are safe going down the road. This whole thread has gotten out of hand.


It's enough to know that we should check our frames etc on a regular basis and that applies to every company out there because they all have basically the same issues. If you don't believe this you need to get out more and talk to other RVers. Then you'll find that there are frame issues with every company.

Yep I'm checking mine this week, I have a company coming to the house to ultrasound the entire frame, it will tell me the thickness along the entire length, now just trying to figure out how to get to the pin box area without taking the front cap off to check the steel in that area. Will remove cap if we have to.

You are right every company has frame issues but if you do a google search you will see that the majority of the issues are coming from Lippert frames. Oh never mind disregard that statement, you can't beleive anything you read on the Internet.

Dave, correct me if I'm wrong please. If my memory serves me right I think you were towing a vehicle behind the MS when I saw you at the first rally. If I do have that right can you tell me if you did anything to beef the frame up? or did you just had a hitch to back of the frame?
I'm just being curious is all.