Rear tag axle shocks NG !

[Raca-roni]

Hello everyone,
I wanted to pass on some info that maybe of interest to folks with Spartan chassis with tag axles.
A week ago I had a rear tag axle shock replaced because it broke. When the technician removed it he also noticed that the shock did not work at all. It was blown out. These are Monroe gas shocks. There was no resistance at all in the shock. It could be moved in and out with no force at all just like an accordian......Yesterday the other rear tag axle shock was checked out while my coach was being lubed and the tech noticed oil all down along the bottom end if it. He removed it and low and behold this one was also blown out. I never thought that I would have seen this type of failure on a coach that is just about a year old and only has 11k miles on it.
Spartan replaced both shocks under warranty.
Has anyone else had this problem?

Bob

[Raca-roni]

Hello everyone,
I wanted to pass on some info that maybe of interest to folks with Spartan chassis with tag axles.
A week ago I had a rear tag axle shock replaced because it broke. When the technician removed it he also noticed that the shock did not work at all. It was blown out. These are Monroe gas shocks. There was no resistance at all in the shock. It could be moved in and out with no force at all just like an accordian......Yesterday the other rear tag axle shock was checked out while my coach was being lubed and the tech noticed oil all down along the bottom end if it. He removed it and low and behold this one was also blown out. I never thought that I would have seen this type of failure on a coach that is just about a year old and only has 11k miles on it.
Spartan replaced both shocks under warranty.
Has anyone else had this problem?

Bob

[Doc Mark]

Hi Raca-roni, funny you should mention it. I was at Charlotte, MI at the Spartan factory on Tuesday for some chassis work, and as we were test driving it after the work was done I told Chris that we had had to have both front shocks replaced at delivery as they had broken on the trip from the factory. He said that they had gotten a batch of bad shocks that either just moved freely, or broke at the connector ends.

Might just want to have ALL the shocks checked as it sounds like yours came from the bad batch. The rest of mine were OK.

Mark

[Raca-roni]

Thanks Doc !
I remember the tech telling me that the front shocks were Bilsteins and the main rear end shocks were also Bilsteins. I wonder why they have Monroe shocks on the tag axle!

Bob