Lousy Forest River support for buyers - Event Date: 21 Jul 2014

   It's very hot to go camping locally but hoping in a month or two to be up in Tennessee for a couple weeks. I sometimes refer to our camper as the Tennessee Express we are often traveling back and forth.

   I will try to explain as best as possible. The wheels were slanting in at the top and the cargo capacity numbers on the label from the factory were greater than the rating of the axle 3,500 lbs. The dealer made some phone calls and it was agreed that Forest River would replace the axle with the newer 4,400 axle with 15" wheels. When I arrived home from Alabama where I purchased the camper I found out Dometic had a kit to quite the AC under warranty. When I had it at Camping World it was brought up that one wheel was slanted inward on top and the other wheel was straight. It was looked at by a technician pictures were taken and manufacturer confirmed it was a bent axle so another axle was ordered with new tires. So we are now with a third axle one the original 3,500 lb. and two the replaced bent axle and the present axle. There were a lot of complaints with the Vibe having only a 3,500 lb. axle with little room for cargo weight and my guess it hurt in the number of Vibes sold. Now all the new Vibes have the 4,400 lb. axle. And I believe they are all Lippert axles. We only have about four miles on our new axle and tires so can not say if this axle will work well in the future but I am hoping it will and the first axle was a defective axle from the factory. 

Well.. a 3500 pound axle.. is a 3500 pound axle. So unless you overload the trailer, the rating FR puts on it should be valid, yes? I suspect your aliner had the same axle because they only come in certain sizes, and that got them the cargo capacity + dry weight they wanted to use.. 

Originally posted by David and Danette    That may be true if the parts are coming from Forest River but we just had our axle replaced twice and it was about a two week wait for the new axle to arrive.

Dave,

I too am interested in the axle saga. I recall early on you were concerned about the cargo capacity on the Vibe. As I recall you were told FR would be using a higher capacity axle and they would upgrade yours. I see FR is now advertising the Vibe 65XX at GVWR=4700#+. Did you have trouble with the upgraded axle too? I've always thought the larger Pods should have been dual axle and the same for the Vibes. Livinlite (Camplite) uses dual Dexter 3500# axles starting with their 2400# empty weight models.

I also recall Gulfstream RV had a lot of trouble with their single axle 19' Visa/Vista trailers, although I think they used Lippert.

   That may be true if the parts are coming from Forest River but we just had our axle replaced twice and it was about a two week wait for the new axle to arrive. But the axles I believed were covered under the manufactures warranty and were sent directly from Lippert. And I believe too that insulation for the refrigerator was covered under the Dometic warranty and it arrived from the manufacture. And now that I remember there was a vibration and sound upgrade package for the AC that too was sent directly from Dometic. So I guess it depends on the parts, counter tops I understand that is manufactured most likely by Forest River.