I wanted to start by thanking everyone for all the great info posted to this forum – I always learn so much from the posts.
Sorry for the long post but thought I would share a tire blow out incident, brake re-wire, and J-wrap repair.
I was 5 hours into a 7-hour trip. Had stopped about 45 minutes prior to the blowout for fuel. All tires were inspected and in good shape. Tireminder TPMS showed all tire pressures and temps at normal. Original Rainer tires with approx. 10,000 miles. This was going to be the last trip on these tires. Had the new ones picked out.
I had an instantaneous tire failure – no TPMS warning – while traveling about 60 MPH. Fortunately I was in the right lane and could immediately pull over. Drivers side rear tire blew with some resulting damage to the J-wrap on the kitchen slide – not too bad considering the potential.
The trailer sits level on the TV. Wheel bearings were inspected and re-packed less than a year ago. All brakes were, at the time, in good shape and fully functional. To confirm I didn’t have a bearing issue, I inspected and re-packed bearings when I had the wheels off.
Used the spare to complete the trip. Once at our site, I ordered 5 Sailun S637 ST235/85R16 tires. Had them shipped to a local shop in NC. Once they arrived, I brought a couple rims at a time and had them swapped. The shop had trouble balancing one of the tires. They finally did but it had quite a bit of weight on it. When I returned to VA, I brought the tire to my local shop – they couldn’t balance the tire very well either – thought it was the rim – not sure if it was a cause or result of the blowout – I ordered a new rim.
I initially went to Tredit (
https://www.tredittire.com/ ) and found the original Altitude aluminum rim that Jayco uses – They didn’t have any in stock and referred me to Trailer Set Go (
https://trailersetgo.com/ )– a sister company. Both were extremely responsive and Trailer Set Go had the rim – they shipped it right out. Great experience with both companies. New rim and tire balanced out well.
Upon inspection of the underside, I did notice that a few of the driver side brake wires were impacted by flying rubber. Some were pulling out of the connectors and the overall factory wire install was garbage – figured I would replace all the wiring. I purchased an outdoor 14/3 heavy duty extension cord. I pulled all the wires out of the axles and cut all the original connectors out and completely replaced all the wiring. Whole project only took about an hour. I’m happy with the results and the heavy coating from the extension cord cover protects the wiring.
Since I only used two of the three cord wires, a future project is to wire up some backup and under camper lights.
Next project was replacing the J-wrap. After quite a bit of research and pricing, I got the full replacement panel from Worldwide RV (
https://www.worldwiderv.com/ ) – Their customer service on the phone was exceptional. They provided me with the original Jayco schematic of my kitchen slide to ensure I ordered the correct piece. They had, by far the best price. I got the entire J-wrap piece, delivered to my house for $146.06. It took about 3 weeks for the part to arrive.
When I pulled the fender skirt that sits over the wheels, you can see that it’s not a single piece of J-wrap – there are 3 separate pieces of sheet metal. I only needed to replace the rear section. A single, quick radius cut was all that was needed. Lower corner is only held by a rivet. I reassembled, added a support strap and it’s good as new. J-wrap replacement took about an hour.
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