Check your shackles

[Riich]

Recently a friend was fueling up and during a walk-around he discovered a shackle had torn loose. When I heard about it I took a good look at mine and discovered that two of them were getting ovalled out pretty bad. I was headed for the same misfortune. Go check you shackles! You don't want to deal with this issue out on the road. I replaced mine with the Morryde brand, they are heavy duty. A friend and I were able to change out the shackles and all the bolts in under 3 hours. It was time well spent.

[Marcm157]

This is a very common occurrence and each time its posted about more people find problems they never knew existed. Upgraded shackles and wet bolts are one of the very first things I swap out on every new trailer. I also add the CRE300 Equalizer at the same time.

[RoadrunnerII]

Yes many have swapped the shackles and put in wet bolts. Make sure you position the bolts so the grease outlet is not on the spring pressure point when the weight is on the springs
It's in the installation instructions. Otherwise you will need to jack up trailer to grease. I grease mine at least twice a year. I marked the bolt head where the grease outlet was positioned.

RoadrunnerII

[Cincinnati Kid]

Yes, make sure the grease holes are at 9:00 or 3:00. Also, don't twist the old bolts out, tap them out, they are pressed into the hangers, and if you twist them, you will widen the hole and they will spin.
Another thing, pre-test each one with grease before install. I had one or more (can't remember how many) that were not drilled through, and would not take grease.

This last trip was the first time in 4 + years that all of the shackles took grease with no problem. We do 2 fairly long trips each year, so I now will grease them before each trip.

[Riich]

Yep I followed all the directions. They all took grease just fine when the job was complete. I should have done this much sooner. A shackle failure could be pretty catastrophic under the right conditons.