MORryde X-Factor Dropdown Crossmember for Stock Leaf Spring Suspension

Video Transcript for MORryde Stock Leaf Spring Suspension X-Factor Dropdown Crossmember Install - Travel Trailer

Hey guys, Kevin here from etrailer, and today I'm gonna be showing you how to install the Morryde X-Factor Crossmember System for Leaf Spring Suspensions on our 2019 Coachmen Apex Ultra-Lite. So the MORryde X-Factor Crossmember is actually going to help sure up your frame because a lot of frames on trailers nowadays are a lot thinner than they used to be so that they can give you that ultralight weight capacity here. So they take that out of something and that's gonna come out of your frame. So what this does is it's going to make a cross member going straight across from this beam over to your other beam, and sure up the beam so that you lose that body roll and that kinda stress, that you'll get back and forth with your frame as you're making tight turns, or when you're pulling down a highway with a semi going by you, or if it's just a really windy day like it is today. So while this installation is not that difficult it is very time consuming. You do have to have the right jacks to hold up your trailer, and you're gonna have to be under it.

So you're gonna need extra jacks as well to hold up your equalizer like I did when I installed these or holding up your axle itself, just so that you can take the weight off of the equalizer so that we can get it back in place. Instead of buying this kit if you want it to be a little bit easier, MORryde does sell two other kits. It is the SRE and the LRE where it actually is the cross member and an equalizer, where the cross member will just bolt right onto the equalizer. It's a whole lot easier, saves you a lot of time and you'll get a better equalizer than what you have to start with. All right, so your kit is gonna come with your cross member beam which is gonna be two separate parts.

That way it's adjustable to fit whatever frame width you have. So they come with eight bolts to lock these together, along with the nuts. Four bolts for connecting to your hangers. Two wet bolts, which are also going to be connecting through into your hangers. And then our clamp straps right here.

The tools that you're gonna need is a 13/16th wrench, a 9/16th wrench, half inch wrench, a 11/16 socket, 9/16 socket, and a half inch socket. So start off our install, we're gonna have to lift up our trailer so that we can have our axles hanging free. And then we're gonna actually have to lift up our axles just a little bit, on whatever side we're gonna start working on just so that we have no weight sitting on our equalizer here so that when we take it off, we're not gonna have it drop down at all. So the first step here is going to be removing our shoulder bolt from our hanger. It holds our equalizer in place.

That nut off we can try popping this out we might have a little bit too much tension on here and have to hammer it out. So I'm gonna grab our hammer and a punch and we're gonna punch this out from the inside. So now we're gonna lift up our axle and our equalizer back into place so that we can put our new wet bolt in. So I'm just using two bottle jacks here. I'm just gonna keep going back and forth between the two to evenly press this up into place. And if you need to you can take a pry bar and kinda push your stuff into place. Just get it in right. And we'll slowly work our bolt in. So we can get it in place inside the equalizer. And then what you can do, is just take a smaller socket, just get it around that zerk fitting and just hammer it in. Make sure that you're coming out right on the other side of your hanger. So this is gonna have some teeth on it that are gonna pull into your hanger and keep this from actually turning. We're gonna hammer it in just a little bit and then let the nut on the other side pull it in the rest of the way. All right, teeth are starting to go into our hanger. So the next step is we're going to stick one of our cross members on here. So, I'll put that up into place. It doesn't matter what side you choose. You'll see, one side has these small bolt holes and then the other side has a slant, like a elongated hole. You just wanna make sure that you have your head of your cross members sitting up like this 'cause that wet bolt is gonna slide into this hole right here. Once that's in place we can start putting on our nut. We're not gonna do it super tight right now just hand tight. And then you're gonna wanna use another jack to support your cross member here until you get to the other side. Okay, so since our cross member has these two spots for our bolt to go through for our clamp strap, we're gonna need to actually drill out a hole for our bolt here because our factory hole is not lining up with it. The other side is gonna be hanging off the end of the hanger. So we're not gonna have to worry about cutting any extra holes there. Just a single one over here. So, I wanna get this back on our wet bolt. All right, now that I have that in place, gonna put my level up here. Make sure I have it exactly where I want it. Then I'm gonna take a paint marker, and just make a little dot on that hole. Quickly take my cross member out, and then I can drill it out. And I do wanna note that you only are drilling through this side of the hanger. You're not actually gonna need to go all the way through the second side. So I took my shoulder bolt out of my equalizer here. And actually on this side I ended up just supporting the equalizer itself just to get a little bit better of a, better control of this just because I'm out of jacks. So, next thing we're going to do is take our new wet bolt, and we're going to slide it through. This one came through a little bit easier, but I am gonna still have to go on the outside and hammer that in using a socket just like I did on the first one. All right, so now that we have both of our wet bolts in and we've got both of our cross member pieces in, we're gonna connect the two cross member pieces together using our flange bolt and our flange nuts. We're going to put these on the furthest side out from the center as we can. Can't make that hole so I'm gonna go right here. I actually already put one in here to kind of brace these two together, as well as using a jack just to kind of hold 'em straight so that I can get 'em in through the hole. But we're gonna put two on the bottom, two on the top, same thing on the other side. And then we'll tighten 'em down with our nuts. I'm gonna use my 9/16th wrench to hold our nut in place. And then I'm going to take my 9/16th socket right here, and we're gonna tighten her up. So now we have our cross number in place. I'm going to put our two clamp strap bolts in I already got this one in on this side inside of that hole that we drilled, and now we'll stick our other one in over here. We're gonna take our clamp strap, that up, and then put on our nuts. And then we can go ahead and tighten 'em down. All right, so now that we got our flange, or our clamp strap bolts tightened down, we're gonna go ahead and tighten down our wet bolts and our flange bolts that hold the two cross member pieces together, and you can find the torque specifications in your instruction manual. Well I think that about does it for our installation of the MORryde X-Factor Crossmember System for leaf spring suspensions, on our 2019, Coachman Apex. My name's Kevin, thanks for watching..