We had some smoke coming out from under our Redwood during our move from Florida NY (approx. 40 miles Northwest of NYC) to College Park MD (Northside Beltway of Washington DC)
I removed all the wheel / brake hubs and found no grease inside any wheel or on any of the brakes. (Note: I pulled all our wheel / brake hubs shortly after purchasing our Redwood and inspected all the brakes, added some grease to the bearings by hand and installed new seals)
The only issue I found with the grease was it was a little "Soupy" and "Runny" so I cleaned all the bearings and hubs real good and repacked the bearings with Valvoline Synthetic High Temperature Bearing Grease.
As far as the brakes, all looked good but I noticed more brake dust in the both of the front axle brakes than the rear axle brakes. Upon inspection I found a brake wire for the rear brakes had got caught in the rear leaf spring and was pinched / cut. It looked like Redwood left a little too much wire slack on the rear axle brake assembly coming down from the underbelly that allowed it to get caught in the leaf spring.
I repaired the cut wire, shortened up the rear axle brake wire coming from the underbelly, cleaned all the brake dust out and put everything back to together then adjusted the brakes.
One our trip down to Max Meadows VA yesterday, our Redwood pulled and stopped great, no smoke and stopping power coming down some of the steep grades was good.
Thanks for the update! Glad that everything is looking smoke-free for now!
Thanks for the update! Glad that everything is looking smoke-free for now!
Made another move from Max Meadows VA to Atlanta GA yesterday, beautiful day, nice drive with light traffic, no issues with our Redwood, pulled and stopped smooth 🙂
Rob,
I just finished up installing the Mor/ryde SRE4000 equalizers. I also found an excessive amount of wire on my back axles. I re-worked mine and added some wire wrap over the wires to make sure they didn't get cut going down the road. I will pull it back to the campground tonight so I will see how see rides. Thanks for all of your tips!!!
