Thread: IMHO Lippert 5th Wheel Frame Engineers are not very bright...

Not sure if anyone is interested in this, but I've been watching some videos on RV construction (since I have a couple 5th wheels now). Personally I think the engineers who designed these RV's are to put it nicely "not the sharpest tools in the shed".

https://youtube.com/shorts/COmlh5_9OkA


Yep, I made my part in this video before I had my coffee!!! lol


Here's the full length video, watch the first 5 minutes and see if you agree. What I hear the guy saying is, the trailer that they build is not designed to carry the load of the camper! And the camper top maker is supposed to build hitch support into their walls. Well, from what I know about RV walls, they are made of very light weight aluminum. The walls are made of aluminum beer cans. That's perhaps a slight exaggeration, but not far off! This manufacturer says the walls, that have cutouts for bedroom slides in them as well, is supposed to carry load. Heck, you ever walk on top an RV, they can barely carry your weight.

So what happens over time is, the lag bolts that hold up those front walls come out, or shear off, and the 5th wheel pin/head moves up and down, and the whole thing falls apart. I thought engineers were supposed to build stuff 2 or 3 times as strong as needed, for safety reasons. But I guess that's not true here. They built it so the guy putting stuff on top the trailer needs to reinforce the their trailer. Unreal.



All this on a consumer product where the structure is invisible, it's under all the cladding, and owners can't physically see what's happening inside there. I'm so surprised there have not been a ton of complete "on the road" failures documented yet, or have there!

Modern Camper side walls are a single lamination. Wood is within the walls only where stuff like a wall mount TV stand attaches, cabinets attach, perpendicular wall sections, etc. I can't imagine the NTSB would allow the attachment by "Lag Bolts" alone of the side walls in such a critical location. The walls are stood up in one piece and set on the floor which is usually wafer board. So some kind of sub-floor is already installed over the 5th wheel hitch area too before the wall is set in place. In high quality units you may find regular plywood but even Air Stream Land Yachts have wafer board floors. One of the first jobs in my shop was to repair a Land Yacht floor. I personally will not have a 5th wheel camper only bumper pulls. Bumper pulls have a full frame.

There’s a company in Indiana that fixes frame flex. Their solution is to jam wood into the aluminum wall studs and then bolt it to the frame. That’s so they can tighten the bolts, otherwise the aluminum would simply crush. Ain’t that crazy! They also weld gussets into the frame at the stress points where it counts. Which imho they shoulda done to begin with.

When I look at my 2010 5th wheel, I can see the stress points inside where the propane tanks are stored. They look good. No stress cracks anywhere that I can see. The 2010 is only 34 ft long. The flex problems seem to affect larger rvs and rvs made after 2012, as far as I can tell. So I think ima keeping the 2010, and just gonna refresh it with some of the good parts off the 2022 bought, which I should never have done so (junk title).


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Originally Posted by Slab

There’s a company in Indiana that fixes frame flex. Their solution is to jam wood into the aluminum wall studs and then bolt it to the frame. That’s so they can tighten the bolts, otherwise the aluminum would simply crush. Ain’t that crazy! They also weld gussets into the frame at the stress points where it counts. Which imho they shoulda done to begin with.

When I look at my 2010 5th wheel, I can see the stress points inside where the propane tanks are stored. They look good. No stress cracks anywhere that I can see. The 2010 is only 34 ft long. The flex problems seem to affect larger rvs and rvs made after 2012, as far as I can tell. So I think ima keeping the 2010, and just gonna refresh it with some of the good parts off the 2022 bought, which I should never have done so (junk title).

Bud you are allowed to make a mistake, we all are. You hit retirement with lots of experience how you got there but retirement is like starting over. Every once in a while I buy something I shouldn't have, my C230 Mercedes is a good example. I would never have bought it if I new only someone with the STAR Software can work on the computer & transmission. If I didn't like the car so much I was ready to scrap it when the computer failed. It sat here for months before I had a tow truck bring it to the shop. Really chapped me that I had no way to fix it on my own. Best to look forward and look at all the good parts you got with the buy and not beat yourself up because you bought it. Here in MS you can buy a "Bonded Title" for something like that and put it back on the road.

Originally Posted by Rojo

Bud you are allowed to make a mistake, we all are. You hit retirement with lots of experience how you got there but retirement is like starting over. Every once in a while I buy something I shouldn't have, my C230 Mercedes is a good example. I would never have bought it if I new only someone with the STAR Software can work on the computer & transmission. If I didn't like the car so much I was ready to scrap it when the computer failed. It sat here for months before I had a tow truck bring it to the shop. Really chapped me that I had no way to fix it on my own. Best to look forward and look at all the good parts you got with the buy and not beat yourself up because you bought it. Here in MS you can buy a "Bonded Title" for something like that and put it back on the road.

I too would not be happy about this proprietary garbage. We need "open source" as a computer nerd might say! This is the problem with new vehicles, and that's why I like the old stuff so much.

Originally Posted by Slab

I too would not be happy about this proprietary garbage. We need "open source" as a computer nerd might say! This is the problem with new vehicles, and that's why I like the old stuff so much.

My wife & I have a saying "Legacy Gear is the Best Gear" including our bodies, old stuff is Gold stuff! I will not have a new truck but will eat humble pie if my wife wants one for herself. I have never told her what to drive.

Yeah I’ll definitely get my money back out of some of the parts I use off it, and it’ll be fun tearing it down (and making a trailer out of it). But like I need another project.


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