MOTORHOME MODIFICATION - Installing Fox Agile 2.5 Shocks on 2016 Winnebago View

Since we are not traveling this month, I thought that I would fill in a few blog posts with some of the things that we took care of on the motorhome in between trips. 

In late August, we turned around from our US 2 West trip (due to wildfire smoke and high temperatures) We were back home over the Labor Day weekend. That was kind of nice, because we like to avoid the holiday crowds in the parks anyhow. 

Since we were home, Steve decided maybe it would be a good time to replace the shocks and the struts on our motorhome.  It is 8 years old and we do notice some dipping and swaying when we go in and out of parking lots and driveway aprons at gas stations. Also, the amount of sway you get with a passing semi is more noticeable. The guys on our Winnebago View Facebook list have said replacing the shocks and the struts with better designed ones makes a huge difference. 

The original Bilstein rear shocks were never made for the heavy added weight of a motorhome on top of the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter chassis. They have since suggested that we upgrade them to the Fox Agile 2.5 shocks. They are rather pricey at $500 a pair, but they are suggested to be a much better shock for the rear of our coach with better dampening and ride control. 

Since we cut our vacation short and didn't make it all the way out to the Pacific Ocean, the vacation budget had a few extra pennies in it to order the shocks as well as new struts for the front end. I will post about them in the next blog.


Steve ordered up the shocks from Agile Offroad Company: 

https://agileoffroad.com/product/agile-fox-2-5-rear-shocks-mercedes-sprinter-3500-rv-class-c/

They arrived right away within two days.

Now I only have a few photos that I can find in my files of Steve actually working on the shocks. It was hard to get a camera in close to see what he was doing. 

But what I do have is a video that I made of the entire process that I had put on YouTube. Here's the YouTube video if you would like to watch it:

As I said, the shocks came right away and he was very excited to open up the box. Kind of like a little kid at Christmas.

He spread out a tarp and jacked up the rear of the motorhome a bit. Of course he had wheel chocks and the emergency brake on as well as extra jacks and supports securing the work area.

This kind of reminds me of the Wizard of Oz?

As I said, it was really kind of hard to get a camera underneath there. I set a small GoPro on a tripod to make the video. But I was trying to snap some photos at the same time. It wasn't really easy.

Here he is removing the old yellow Bilstein shock. It is stock original equipment, so that means 8 to 9 years old.  They are pretty worn out as we discovered pushing on them once he got them removed. Fortunately, all four nuts and bolts removed easily and were not rusted up.

Here are the two old yellow ones compared to the new ones. It was a big difference when he tried squishing down on them with the new ones compared to the old. 

Here's a photo now of him placing the new ones up into their correct position. It wasn't too hard to squish them into place. The new nuts were put on with a thin bead of thread locker to help keep them secure.

Then he went around and torqued down each of the four nuts and bolts with his torque wrench set to 110 ft lb. as spec'd by the manufacturer. Done!

I think that it is wonderful that even at the age of 66, Steve is able to crawl around underneath the rig and do this type of maintenance. We really don't want to do a lot of maintenance but he saved us hundreds of dollars in labor by handling this himself.  We also ordered the front struts and when those are installed, we will arrange to have an alignment done at the Mercedes dealership down in Appleton. That is one thing we can't do ourselves.

Packed in the box with the shocks, was a really nice thank you note from the company. It's not often you see things like this nowadays.  More businesses should do this. Makes us feel like valued customers and that our purchase means something to them other than just "profit".

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I thought I would add on to this blog one other new purchase that we had just made for the motorhome. Our relaxing zero gravity recliners were a bit uncomfortable. They were a cheaper set we had bought at Dunham's a couple years back. 

We had stopped in at the local Camping World store to pick up something, and we noticed this really nice relaxing recliner zero gravity chair on clearance!! 

We really like the nice wooden arms and when we each took a turn sitting in it, we realized this was going to be a really really nice chair. The center part was really padded and squishy, the cords seem to be heavy duty, the frame seem to be very well made. And most of all the fabric seemed washable and somewhat rain repellent. The only problem was, there was only ONE of them! 

It just so happens, in Green Bay Wisconsin, right across the highway from Camping World is a Grand Design store with many of the same products.

So we grabbed our cell phone and called over there. Sure enough, they also had ONE chair left! 

We asked them to hang on to it 

and we would be right over across the highway. 

We had to go up and down a "loop de loop"  of an overpass and a couple roundabouts to get there.

Yep, 

an exact match!

We tried them out, right then and there. Silly us, sitting in the parking lot. A salesman came by and said he could sell us a camper to go with the chairs! Lol!

To sum this up, besides getting new shocks on the motorhome, we got new shocks for our butts. Lol --- springy bungee cord cable shocks on nice new chairs for our comfy butts. 

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Stay tuned for our next blog where I will talk about replacing the front struts on our 2016 Winnebago View.