I towed our TT to Gatlinburg, TN last week, and had a nightmare trip. To get my weight distribution right, I had to drop the hitch bar a couple of notches so we wouldn't be 'bouncy'. Only problem with that is, it left my spring bars only 5-1/2 inches off the ground. That in itself isn't a problem driving down the highway. But, when turning off the road into some gas stations where the parking lot goes above street leve, the sping bars will drag slightly.
I checked everything out when I did that, and all was fine. When we pulled out, the bars dragged a little again, but I wasn't worried about it since there wasn't a problem when I checked it out while filling up.
Fast forward to 100 miles down the road, and it's starting to get dark. A car pulls up beside me, then drops back and start flashing it's bright lights on and off at me like crazy. I pull off the interstate, and he pulls off behind me. He says, "Your left chain is broken and dragging!" Sure enough, it was. I wrapped it up around the hitch bar and continued on.
Then the worst part--between Knoxville and the 407 exit (Sevierville, Pigeon Forge) we were delayed for 2 hours and 45 minutes in 2 different sets of construction--AT NIGHT AFTER 10 pm! For 7 miles in the second one, I would drive 20 feet and stop for a minute, drive 50 feet and stop for 3 minutes, etc, etc. Totally sucked.
You would think things would have gotten better once we got to the campground--HAH! We didn't make it until 12:45am, and our site was pitch black, and I had to back between 2 trees with barely enough room to fit between. Took me 20 minutes to do it, because there was a flower garden strategically placed with big rocks around it, so I couldn't make a good cut. How did I find out about the big rocks? I backed into them and couldn't move any further.
Anyway I finally got it backed in, and we set up camp. Took about 30 minutes in the dark to level it and get the stabilizer jacks down. All that put us to 2am. At 2:20am, we were about to crawl into bed, when there was a loud knocking at the door. I opened it, and it was the campground owner telling me that we needed to keep the noise down, there had been several calls of complaints. Instead of doing what my head told me, which was to go ballistic, I calmly said, "Normally, when I see someone having trouble (which we plainly were), my reaction is to ask the folks if they need help, not to report them."
I mean, I understand noise needs to be kept down, but it's not like we were setting off fire crackers or being obnoxious. We have a special need child that was being very cranky, and we had to get things done right.
Anyhow, back to the problem of the dragging spring bars. I talked to Sean of Propride after I got some advice from another camper at our park. He told me to put air bag springs on the rear end. Sean concurred. The problem is, my trailer is light (7400 lbs), but the tongue weight is 1100 lbs dry. And on top of that, our only storage is under the front, just behind the gas bottles. Also under our bed, which is also up front. So most likely we are over the 1400 lbs of the spring bars.
Hopefully the air bags added to the suspension will solve the problem, and raise the rear end up enough that the spring bars won't drag.
