The maintenance that keeps a fifth wheel on the road isn't the stuff you see. It's the stuff underneath: tires, suspension, the greased joints that carry 16,000 pounds down the interstate. It's also the stuff that's easiest to skip, because checking it means crawling around on gravel, and skipping it doesn't punish you today. It punishes you three states from now. This week we worked through our undercarriage list on the Brinkley and filmed the mistakes so you can skip the learning curve.
Watch the full video on YouTube.
Propane first
We started with a propane refill, which is the least exciting job on the list and also the one you'll regret skipping the first cold night of a boondocking stretch. If you're topping off before travel anyway, do it before the tanks are buried behind a hitched-up truck and a schedule.
Tire pressure: the check everyone skips
Here's the mistake we see (and made): checking tire pressure by eyeball, or checking it once a season, or checking it with the gas-station gauge that reads whatever it feels like. Fifth wheel tires run near their maximum load rating, and being 10 PSI low is invisible from the outside while it quietly cooks the tire from the inside. We check every tire, every travel day, with a digital gauge (we use an ETENWOLF T300), and the readings after months parked proved the point: several tires had drifted well below spec.
A real compressor changes everything
The reason people skip airing up their tires is that doing it with a cigarette-lighter pump takes half a morning. This trip we put a VIAIR 400P portable compressor to work, and it's one of those purchases that makes the maintenance actually happen. It fills a big trailer tire in minutes instead of an eternity, does the truck tires too, and shuts off automatically. Good tools don't just save time. They remove the excuse.
Wet bolts: the grease job that saves your suspension
Wet bolts are the greaseable pivot bolts in the trailer suspension, and they're the poster child for undercarriage neglect. They need grease on a regular schedule, most owners have never touched them, and a dry wet bolt wears its bushing until your suspension develops slop you can't un-wear. We went around every fitting with a LockNLube grease gun and Lucas Red N Tacky, and we show the technique in the video, including the part where you keep pumping until fresh grease actually pushes through. The first time we did this job we stopped too early on half the fittings, which is the same as not doing them.
The small stuff counts too
Between the big jobs we knocked out the unglamorous extras: laundry, and lining the stove top with aluminum foil, which sounds like a grandma trick because it is one, and it works. Ten minutes of foil saves an hour of scrubbing baked-on cooking mess later.
None of this is complicated. That's kind of the point. The undercarriage jobs that prevent blowouts and suspension failures are a tire gauge, a compressor, a grease gun, and the discipline to actually crawl under there on a schedule. The owners who have a tire blow out on the highway usually didn't need better luck. They needed a Tuesday afternoon like this one.
Watch the full maintenance day, mistakes included, on YouTube. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.