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Topic: Broken Bracket on Sway Bar (Read 475 times) previous topic - next topic
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Broken Bracket on Sway Bar

Yahoo Message Number: 10406
Little story about a broken bracket on the sway bar: Last week as I was leaving a campground in Oklahoma City, I went over a pot hole onto the freeway and started bouncing up and down on my seat quite violently. Pulled over into a gas station and looked under my coach and spotted the broken u-joint on the right side sway bar. It was broken across the bolt hole and the bolt was still attached and the other bolt was missing; the u-joint was just hanging clung to the rubber padding between the sway bar and the u-joint.
Called Country Coach and John Bickell helped my out and had me towed to Freightliner. John was great and had the parts immediately sent to Freightliner and I was up and running with only a two day delay. John told me that this was not the first coach that this had happened to and that this happened to about 3 or 4 other coaches in the last 8-9 months (that he personally knew of). He stated that Neway was looking into this to see if there is a problem with the vendor who supplies this bracket to Neway.
There is more to this story. As I was driving back to Calif. at the end of March, I happened to go over a sharp bum on the freeway (at 65 miles an hour). I started to hear a banging noise that sounded like metal on metal on the right side. When I got to my destination I called Country Coach and described the problem with them and they had me look under the coach to see if I could spot anything; I didn't. The problem persisted and when I got to Irvine, Calif. I had Pacific Cal Cummins take a look and see if they could find anything; they didn't. The problem persisted and I had them check again; again they didn't find anything. The problem continued to persist (it is now early part of June) and when I was having my 15,000 service maintenance performed, I had them check again. Again they did not find anything.
To wrap this story up: the metal on metal sound that I had been hearing on the right side for almost 3 months, was the broken u-joint. You could tell because if you looked at the the place where the u-joint was broken, it was rusted (not a fresh break). The u-joint had been hanging there attached with only one bolt and after 3 months the bolt had come loose and fell off when I went over the pothole in Oklahoma City.

Rick Barnette,

Fulltiming in a 2004, 36' Allure, 31018