Time to get this thing rolling!
First off, let me say that I completely failed at getting photos during this process. I only grabbed a few. But honestly, there isn't much to this step.
If you took the axels off of your Airstream then hopefully you'll remember how to reverse engineer it and put it back on. And if you're not adding a lift kit it will be pretty straightforward.
I am putting the Dexter 3 inch lift kit on, because I want to be able to roll down some more rough terrain than Airstreams are usually able to do, so I'll need that extra space under the carriage.
I ordered the axels and lift kit from highskyrvparts.com and they were super helpful with the whole process. The guy I talked to told me that when Airstream originally had the axels made for the trailers that their load capacity was too low and that's what led to a lot of the frame separation issues. I believe we originally had 3500lb capacity axels on our 31 footer. Since we are planning on kitting this out for full time living, I went with the 6000lb axels. I also found out that they started making the axes with a steeper degree in the "spring" or whatever it's called, so we'd be getting another inch or so of lift from the axel itself.
The lift kit comes with all the hardware for mounting the axels but it doesn't necessarily come with the right holes for your particular frame. Ours didn't so we had to notch out one of the holes on each spacer to make it fit. I wanted to be sure I was notching out the right one so I mounted the spacers to the axels and we lifted them up to the frame to make sure the axels were sitting right where we wanted them and marked out where we needed to notch the holes. We ended up doing the holes on the "outsides" so that each axel would sit farthest apart from each other instead of closer.
We then took the Spacer's up to Tom's Auto shop where we had plan to grind them out but the metal was too thick and too hard, so we ended up getting out the blow torch to cut it.
Once those were cut it was as easy as getting the axels underneath, using the jack to lift them up into place and mounting them onto the frame along with the spacers. Once the axels were installed we put the break assemblies on along the brake drums and bearings. All that is beyond my knowledge so you can check out the video below for instructions from Tom Auto himself.
WIth the axels, brakes, and wheels now on, we moved Serenity to the backyard will she will await the next step! Hopefully we will be able to move it to Boise soon so that it's close by and easier to work on. We also need a place we can park it inside a shop because the next steps we have are repairing the shell and replacing some of the panels as well as taking the windows out to reseal them. I don't want to leave the trailer outside as it will expose the subfloor to weather and potential water damage.
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