Class A Front End Alignment & Safe-T-Plus Adjustment

Hey I got here as soon as I could I hope you weren't waiting long we just had our class a Motorhome aligned and we already had a safety t+ installed that I did about a year ago the safety T plus in my opinion is one of the most recommended upgrades that I give my friends and people that I hang out with it it just gives great row stability is some some protection when you if you ever had a blowout it's an easy install it's about an hour hour and a half I'm going to cover in this video the alignment that we got and a great quick tip on how to adjust that safety T plus to make that motorhome go straight down the road coming up on RV street [Music] so a little background on this video before we get into the details a while back ago I had two new Michelin tires put on the stairs and when I had those new Michelin's put on I'm not a big believer in powders and beads and all that stuff for balancing tires so I went ahead and also bought the Sentra Matic balancing rings so I had the tire I bought the tires I had them Road force balanced those tires put on the Sentra Matic rings and the new tires once I had those on I came back to the house and I installed the safety T plus myself I am a firm believer in the safety t plus and it's a very easy accessory to install you have that one bracket that one bolt on the left or right there underneath the driver's side and then you have the bracket and the two u-bolts on the passenger side some quick facts about the safety T plus there are three different models there's the 41 to 30 which is the blue one that's the one we installed that's for coaches that are 35 feet and above then there's the 41 180 the white one that's for 31 to 34 feet and then they have the 41 140 that's the red one and that's for 29 feet or less we installed like I said the blue one the 41 to 30 on our 35 foot 2012 Winnebago vista 35 F it's an F 53 chassis the reason I like these safety T pluses is it not only gives you a much more stable and controllable driving down the road dealing with strong winds or 18 wheelers going by or what-have-you especially in the smaller class A's or class C's but it also provides our right amount of safety if you ever had a blowout that tremendous force that that steering wheel is gonna be yanked to one side of the other that safety t+ is going to allow you to gain control a whole lot easier and recover and get to safety to the side of the road a whole lot better than if you did not have it when I installed our safety t plus I was in Houston at the time I found a nice straight level piece of highway and I did watched all the videos online on how to see which way is pulling pull the coach over loosen the nuts on the u-boats bump it over tighten them back up retry again bah-bah-bah I did that five times over three hours and finally got it it was a glorious moment when I got that thing zeroed in so when I had these new michelin's and sin traumatic balancing rings installed I really didn't want to throw money in on alignment because I didn't even know if I needed one the Hat the coach really handled well as it was so I thought I'm gonna go ahead and put on these tires and rings get some miles on them and let the tires talk to me let them provide some data and I can see the wear and then I'll know whether I needed an alignment or or not so after 3,300 miles we're in a campground in Florida and like normal I got on my creeper I do that every couple three weeks I crawl up underneath her and I roll around under the chassis looking for things making sure everything's good and I noticed on my front tires this is what I saw in this side-by-side comparison both front tires were wearing on the outside edges the passenger tire on the left was wearing a little more than the driver side but otherwise both tires were wearing pretty evenly in the center and on the inside I knew an alignment was in order so I made an appointment and went two days later the shop that I took it to which I'll put down in the description the guy there was awesome he had been working on f53 chassis for 24 25 years and after watching him he could have done this blindfolded but he had a partner that he worked with they had like a little team there he set up the cameras the lasers and his computer he took some measurements dialed that thing in and came he let me stand there and watch the whole thing and he said Martin he says your toe is out and the caster is out I'm gonna have to do both I said okay well in order to do the toe he had to loosen and totally disassemble the not totally disassembled but he had to loosen the safety T plus to adjust the toe which means all that previous adjustment that I had done now is totally gone so he made the toe adjustment and he put in a real thick shim on the right side for the caster it was about quarter maybe five sixteenths thick dropped it down tightened it up and said let's go we pulled out of the bay got out of the driveway and down the road and it was pulling to the right some not a problem he said he turned around we came back into the bay and he had motioned to his helper and said he made a little hand signal they had worked for so many years they knew how to talk just by hand signals his helper got up underneath there and tapped it just like this okay so for a very easy way to adjust the safety t-plus is that these u-bolts and bracket are very tight you've taken it for a drive and let's assume in my case it was pulling to the right well that means that the safety t-plus has to go to the left towards the driver's side this is the passenger side so since it was slightly pulling to the right this has to go to the left so what you do is you take a hammer and you hit the bracket down here first we're not talking about a mighty swing but a pretty enough to where it'll move this bracket a little bit but that's going to put these u-bolts in slightly a little bind and once you've hit this and move this 1/16 to 1/32 of an inch somewhere in that very small very small adjustments then you come back up and you tap this and tap that u-bolt and get those back in aligned go back and take another drive test if it needs to be moved a little bit if it's still drifting to the right a little bit then go ahead and come in here and tap this again and then tap your u-bolts to where they are aligned again you never loosen these and that is a very easy way we got ours aligned in two attempts and that thing goes down the road just perfect and after that helper made that adjustment we pulled backed out of the bay went out the driveway down the street again and it was almost perfect but it was still pulling a little bit to the right he wasn't happy we turned around went back in there pulled over the pit and he motioned there with a hand signal and they're just bumping this like maybe a sixteenth or a thirty-second at a time it's very very small adjustments but they are not loosening those nuts on those u-bolts those are tight and they're just kind of walking and inching it over little by little with a hammer or possibly a hammer and a like a brass bar or something else but he just used his hammer after that second adjustment we backed out of the bay went down the road perfect and since that second adjustment got that thing perfect I was just shocked I was like men this is awesome I wish I would have known this trick when I installed these he said well Martin let me tell you when you did this there were three things working against you and I said what's that he said well number one when you were in Houston and going you said that you were you found a level straight piece of Highway he said that was the first mistake he says because let me ask you he says when you and your wife are driving and traveling around the country what Lane are you win most of the time ninety percent of the time I said the right-hand lane he said that's right and the right-hand lane always almost always leans to the right or has a crown to the right and so when you adjust the safety t-plus you want to compensate for that you want to adjust it to where it will keep you going straight down the road under normal driving conditions normal driving conditions for you is in the right-hand Lane where it slopes off to the right and I'm like well that certainly makes a whole lot of sense so that's how they adjusted it in the right-hand lane with a slight crown to it he said the second thing that was working against you is that every time you went and made an adjustment you crawled underneath you loosened those four bolts those four nuts on the u-bolts bumped it over tighten them back up and that was loosening some of the tension on the spring and the coil he says you want that thing to stay tight you want to bump the coil and those brackets over without loosening those so that spring tension stays the same you don't want that to move at all because we're making very very small adjustments and the third thing he said is that when you were in Houston he says you kept adjusting that you said it took five times to adjust that he said what was happening was as you were not in alignment then your front end was not aligned so every time you were adjusting that to get you to go straight you were actually trying to adjust it to compensate for misalignment so you don't want you want to make sure that your front end is and I told him I said well that's why I wanted it I didn't really know if I needed alignment that's why I'm expecting these tires now he said well that's fine he said you did okay he said but that's what was happening there so in conclusion three things one watch for tire wear that's uneven number two get an alignment if you need one three you install a safety t plus it'll give you more control on the road for headwinds and 18-wheelers and all that and it'll provide you a whole lot more stability and an ability to recover in the event of a catastrophic blowout situation so there you have it a Class A front-end alignment and safety T plus adjustment quick tip this is RV Street stick around [Music]

Channel: RVstreet

Views: 42,759

Keywords: Class A Safe-T-Plus, adjusting a Class A Safe-T-Plus, Class A Front End Alignment, Class A steering accessories, Class A suspension accessories, driving your Class A motorhome, F53 suspension tips, traveling in an Class A Motorhome, installing a Safe-T-Plus on your class a, f53 chassis suspension upgrades, gas motorhome maintenance, best DYI Class A videos, Class A Maintenance - Full Time RV Living, full time RV Vloggers, installing a safe t plus video, class a gas motorhome

Id: uhagvT3pPWE

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 25 2018