Woykin' 'n Practicin'

These 2 P's have been awfully busy making our Pod more...     well, podly. In other words we've been doing a lot of HOW improvement projects.

Some of the projects are completed, others... not so much, but we're still at it. We want to get as much finished while we're still in Hondo as we can. For one thing, we want to have as much free time this Summer as we can. Our workamping schedule at Blackhawk Valley Campground this year consists of three consecutive days on and then four days off. Can you say PLAYTIME? The other reason we want to get a lot of things done down here is because we have the shed to do any fabrication we need, (Holy Monster Garage!), and we have a concrete parking pad to make working under the HOW a whole lot more pleasant.

More pleasant is a big thing when it comes to suspension repairs and modifications.  It also helps that I LOVE doin' this kind of wrenchin'.

Driving a 12-foot 8-inch tall, 37-foot long motorhome with 13-feet of overhang behind the rear axle can get touchy on winding roads. Add another 20-something feet of Toad (Towed Vehicle) behind all that, and it can get downright hard. On last year's trip up the Natchez Trace and though the Smokies, we learned that pretty fast. When we approached a curve at highway speeds, I'd turn the wheel, but the HOW wanted to go straight. Also a 12-foot plus, 20,000-pound vehicle can commence to rockin' back and forth pretty bad on roads with deep ruts, and also when driving on uneven surfaces.  When a semi passes us or we change lanes, or enter and leave business driveways, (eg, gas stations),  things get pretty loose. 

I remember that from my old leaf-sprung Jeep. It means, that a track-bar is needed to keep the frame and the axle tied together to eliminated side-to-side motion of the springs, and that there may be something that needs to be done with the anti sway bars.

The sway bar links are moved from the outer
connecting points to the inner. These are the fronts.

I started with the sway bars because I read about an easy modification that could make a big difference in handling. The mod consists of changing the geometry of the sway bay links to increase the force the sway bars themselves exert between the frame and the chassis, thereby decreasing the side-to-side rocking on the vehicle overall. As an added benefit, the steering also tightens up, becoming more responsive while requiring less effort on the driver's part. 

Same mod on the rear. Note the Z-bracket tying the inner and
outer mounting points for added strength.

It's recommended to swap out the rubber factory sway bar bushings with new ones made of higher quality materials to properly handle the increased forces of the new geometry. When I crawled under the HOW to assess the situation I noticed that all of the sway bar link bushings already had aftermarket high quality bushings. Only the the actual mounts were the OEM rubber kind.

The OEM rubber bushings

These came off the fronts

The rear ones were SHOT!!! 

I could move the sway bar with my hand. Not good.

That's fairly typical on this particular make, model, length and capacity chassis. I went ahead and ordered some poly bushing for both the front and rear mounts.

When the parts came, I got to work. The whole job took under four hours. 

New rear mount bushing

Here's a shot of the whole shebang on the front passenger side. You can
see the poly mount bushing and the modified link geometry. The space
between the link and the bushing is caused by having the suspension
at full droop (it's on the leveling jacks) to check clearance.

There are more HOW improvement projects to share, but this is gettin' kinda long.....                  and I haven't even done the track bar yet...

But like they say, "Life is short. Eat dessert first!"