Shock absorbers on the popup

[rccs]

I tried a search but  could not find any information. I have experienced a lot of trailer bounce on certain highways now that I have started using a weight distribution hitch this year. I purchased a differant tow vehicle in February and the owners manual stated that I needed to use a weight distribution hitch with the size camper I have so I installed one. Now on most of the concrete highways I travel I experience a lot of trailer bounce. On blacktopped roads there is little or no bounce at all, just on the concrete ones. I thought I read somewhere here on the forums once that someone installed shock absorbers to help with this problem. I am going to try to get in touch with Fleetwood and see what they suggest also.

[CUL8R]

Weight distributing hitches change the dynamics of towing.  Your TV and trailer are more of a single unit then with a regular hitch setup.  It sounds like the synergy this has created with your TV and trailer is negative.  You might try modifying another dynamic, possibly vehicle speed, or maybe tire pressure, to overcome the apparant harmonic created by running over the concreate expansion strips.

Good luck,

Jim

[rccs]

I have tried differant speeds with little differance in the amount of bounce I get from the trailer. With my previous tow vehicle I would get a totally differant effect on the same roads because of not having the weight distribution hitch. Without the WDH the ride on the same roads could probably be described as a galloping feeling. I installed heavy duty shock absorbers on that tow vehicle and it seemed to help a quite a bit but did no completely eliminate the effect, just made it more tolerable. I know that the whole setup is much stiffer with the WDH and that is why I thought that possibly installing shocks on the trailer whould help reduce this bounce to a lesser noticable bounce.

[mike4947]

Good chance that it will help, but the folks to talk to are the Dexter axle folks not Fleetwood. Fleetwood has no experieince with shocks and PU's. Since the Dexter folks make the axles and the shock mount kits they are the folks to talk to.

Very good tech help and they've put up with a lot of my stupid questions over the years and always gave me good advise.
What will help them is if you get the axle tag numbers for them so they know right off the bat what axle you have.