Anderson Style Levelers

TravelPod

Starting to think about winterizing for the season.  Ideally with longer storage, we should jack up the trailer to prevent flat spots from forming on the tires.

What about the idea of using Anderson style levelers on each tire instead of jacking up the trailer?

Horigan

Being radial tires, flat spotting isn't really a concern.  At least not something I've ever noticed in the spring.  The bias tires on my boat trailer on the other hand definitely take a set over the winter, but that goes away on the first road trip.

These trailers are a bit tough to put on jack stands as the jack point area is pretty small to lift with a jack and install a jack stand.

manyman297

I started putting our 400 up on Jack stands over the winter this past year. Not for the tires but for the axle. Dexter recommends this in their manual in order to take the load off the rubber cords in the torsion axle. Not sure if it’s doing any good but it’s not too hard to do. 

Bill&Suze

manyman297 said:

I started putting our 400 up on Jack stands over the winter this past year. Not for the tires but for the axle. Dexter recommends this in their manual in order to take the load off the rubber cords in the torsion axle. Not sure if it’s doing any good but it’s not too hard to do. 

Please describe the process of raising the camper and placing the jack stands. Where do you place the jack and where do you put the stands? Thanks.

TourDeForth

wouldn’t the stabilizer struts be sufficient to take some of the load off the tires and axle? At least share the load with the axle and tires?

manyman297

@Bill&Suze I use a bottle jack placed close to the front edge of the lift point (that thick steel plate behind the wheel hub), lift the trailer and then place a 2-ton jack stand right behind it. It’s a tight fit with both of those in that lift point but it works out ok. 

@TourDeForth Nucamp (and most manufacturers) recommend against using the stabilizer jacks to lift the camper. They aren’t designed to carry the weight of the camper. In fact if you take a peek under the camper (in our case a 2021 400) you can see the rear stabilizer jacks are mounted to the subfloor and not the frame of the camper. I’d assume bad things could happen if the weight of the camper was allowed to rest on those stabilizer jacks. 

AnOldUR

@TravelPod has a 320. On our 2020 320S the stabilizers are attached to the frame, not the subfloor as @manyman297 says is the case with his 400. It is not a very robust part of the frame, but will support the weight of the trailer. Obviously, the additional weight of people entering the trailer and the resulting shifting of the load would be a bad idea. Also the geometry of the way the stabilizers work make them not appropriate for lifting the trailer. That said, you can lift the trailer high enough to fully extend the stabilizer using the jack point and then lower it onto the stabilizer. This might provide enough clearance to get a jack stand under the jack point that may otherwise not fit.

In the past, nuCamp suggested a variant of this method to change a flat tire, but no longer do. My guess is that it was too easy to do this incorrectly or disregard basic safety and it led to dangerous conditions. I've done this to change a flat with no damage to the frame, but it's clearly a "do it at your own risk" type of thing.

Jay_and_Kat

@manyman297 another question about what you're doing.  Are you lifting the wheels and tires completely off the ground, or are you lifting the camper JUST enough to get the jack stands under so they take most of the weight of the camper?

manyman297

@AnOldUR you have me second guessing if the 400’s stabilizers are mounted to the frame as well. I need to go take a peek. 

@Jay_and_Kat Funny you should ask because on my initial attempt I had the tires lifted off the ground maybe an inch…a couple of weeks later I go back out and notice the tires are touching the ground again…what happened was the suspension further relaxed even more and the tires eventually touched the ground. For me this was enough weight off the axle and I did’t attempt to raise it any further.