Quote:
Originally Posted by BSexton
I just had the Safe-T-Plus installed on Wednesday. It does seem to have helped the steering on the Axis. It isn't perfect, but it is better. I do have to say that most of my trip home was on I-285 around Atlanta. That is not a real good sample of how well it's going to handle on interstate highway. 285 is never in great condition! 
If you'd ask me if it has corrected all of the issues, I would say no. But, I'm getting a crash course in suspension and steering mechanisms. I'm moving up from a Itasca Reyo. It is based on a Sprinter chassis. The Sprinters have rack and pinion steering and independent front suspension. So, I'm not sure that I can ever get to that level of comfort and ease of driving in the Axis.
I think that the next upgrade will be to the sway bars. However, that will have to wait until we get out to Utah. Just don't have time to deal with that before we have to leave.
Thanks to this forum (and it's participants), I knew what I was getting in to with the Axis before we bought it.
BTW, I got it installed at the factory in Austell, GA. I'm local, so it wasn't a very long drive. If you buy it from them, they will install it for free. It was about $100 more than what I could get the parts from Amazon. I figured we would eat up that $100 savings by having anyone else do the install. And, I'm pretty sure that no one else would know better than them on how to install it and configure it. It took about 45 minutes for them to install it and less than 30 minutes to do the road test and adjustments. |
Now that we have completed the 1800 mile trek from Atlanta to Utah with the Safe-T-Plus installed, I have to revisit my review.
On the first day from Atlanta to the Mississippi border, the handling was pretty much just as I described in the trip back from the factory. However, somewhere in Louisiana, I noticed that the coach was much better. The coach was riding straight down the road without much correction. It was also much easier to steer. I don't know what happened, if something needed to get broken in, but it was vastly improved. Still not as good as steering on the Sprinter based RV, but not far off. The rest of the day was a pleasure.
Most of day 3 and 4 was pretty bad. But, that was not due to RV at all. We got in to flat portion of Texas, and then Arizona and Colorado--all were windy (at times, very windy). I know that there are some suspension upgrades that might help, but we are still driving a big sail!
At the end of day 4, we made it into Utah and the winds died down. When we got to highway 128, north of Moab, it was a pleasure to drive. Highway 128 snakes along the Colorado river as it meanders through the red rocks. I was sitting in the drivers seat thinking that it was money well invested. It drove on that road as nice, or nicer, than the Sprinter.
I'm not sure what happened in Louisiana, but I now recommend the Safe-T-Plus whole heartedly.
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