Build pictures of our New Horizons 5th wheel
- Thread starter Wayne
- Start date
Yes, we look forward to seeing the progress every Friday when the upload more pictures. We toured the plant so the people and facilities are all familiar to us.
It's certainly a good thing to be able to locate items that are covered by the build. The bad part is once the floor is on it can be very difficult to get to anything between the frame and under the floor without removing the bottom sheet of weather protectant. New Horizons has an inspector that checks and approves everything with the build as it progresses. Hopefully, there will be no need to get to anything under the floor for the duration we own the trailer.
No it wasn't, it's already sold and the new truck should be here in about three weeks, if GM doesn't run out of electronic components. The truck we pulled the Airstream with as a 3500 single rear wheel, but with a payload of 3900 lbs., it wasn't sufficient for the new 5th wheel. We ordered a dual rear wheel that has a payload of 5200 lbs. The pin weight of the new trailer will be about 3300 lbs., which give us 1900 lbs. for fuel, people, dogs, hitch, etc. My guess is with all things, people, and dogs we'll have about 700 lbs. of room on the payload with the dual rear wheel.
I've mentioned in a post about why we sold our Airstream that the shower was awkward to stand in and a larger shower was a requirement for our future RV, as we plan on spending more time in it. As you can see the new trailer has a large residential shower, we like!
AutoMechanic
Active member
Definitely making some nice progress on it. Can’t wait to see the finished product.
We know the feeling!
They started the chassis in the second week of March and are working on the final finish now. They should have the trailer completed sometime before July 16th, as we should be there July 20th for the mandatory three day orientation. One of the factors that adds considerable time is paint. They take the trailer from Junction City, KS to Forest City, IA to be pained. The entire process takes about 2-3 weeks.
New Horizons builds their own chassis, cabinets, walls, roof, sides, etc., which adds more on site time. Their production line makes about three 5th wheel trailers/month. Virtually everything can be customized, which also adds a lot of time to the build. For instance, if you want a slide that isn't in the base design, then they will reengineer the chassis, walls, wiring harnesses, etc to suit your requirement. It all takes time.
Our trailer is a Summit, which main components like the chassis, walls, slides, etc are not customizable, but you end up getting built behind a Majestic(s) that are customized, so you're timeline is at the mercy of what's in front of you on the assembly line.
Our 30' International was on the assembly line for about a week, then in the custom shop where the 16" wheels were installed for a couple days, and sat waiting to be towed to our dealer for about a week. We had the Airstream about two and a half weeks after it was started.
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