RV Accessory Review: Blue Ox Tiger Trak

If you drive a front engine gas motorhome, you’ve experienced it all too often — the rear end wagging back and forth as the body shifts from side to side. TigerTrak from Blue Ox was designed to greatly reduces this tail wag due in part to the movement in the springs of gas motorhomes. This is especially true in late-model coaches with long parabolic springs and an extended rear overhang. Situated between the rear axle and the frame, TigerTrak allows unhindered up-and-down movement of the springs while virtually eliminating all side to side movement.  So you’ll find your coach easier to drive and the ride more enjoyable for everyone. There are TigerTrak units for all Workhorse W Series and P Series chassis, plus Ford F-53, E-350 and E-450 models. There is also a TigerTrak built for all Chevy P Series gas chassis and Kodiac truck 4500 and 5500s on the road.  Installation is made easy with custom brackets for each type of chassis and requiring only basic tools.

So enough with what it is, does it work?  Well it had been a while since I owned a front engine gas

powered RV, but how poorly they handle came back to me all to quickly. I had run through 2 semi truck RV conversions which by far where the most road worthy vehicles I had ever driven in my life, but they lacked living space. We then moved on to a 40' diesel pusher which had great space and drove quite well, but was terrible on fuel mileage and wasn’t ideal for day trips. So we decided to downsize to a Class C on the Ford E450 chassis and maybe get a little more use out of our RV and improve fuel mileage. We put about 600 miles on the RV without a track bar mainly on 2 lane back roads with a few hundred on the highway. I felt a safe speed on 2 lanes roads to be about 45-50 mph and 55-60 mph on the highway depending on cross wind speed and truck traffic. The most unsettling part of driving this RV was that tail wag and if there was a cross wind or truck passing us and the road was rutted it could easily move you into the other lane. So the only thing you can do is back the speed down, but then you have traffic running you over or passing unsafely. And that was all without towing a car, I could not imagine how bad it would be while towing a car.

The installation is pretty straight forward and other than me getting confused on a picture in the instruction versus doing what the directions told me I had it installed it in about 2 hours.  I wont go into details on the install because the video below is very detailed and will give you a good idea what is involved in the process.  I installed Model TT2450 on a 2011 Itasca Cambria 31 ft which has 3 slides and for the test we tried to load it like it normally will be with 2/3 fresh water and an approximate weight of 13,800 lbs. The only other chassis mod is a set of air bags on the rear axle installed by the manufacturer. The test was a 580 mile round trip to have some leveler put on the RV. (a review coming soon) I immediately could feel a huge difference in handling the moment we got going. We began the trip with very light winds on 2 lane roads and it drove beautifully, easily maintaining the speed limit of 55 mph on even narrow 2 lane curvy roads. I was so tickled with the improvement you could not wipe the grin off my face. We hit the highway and that grin never left my face even when trucks passed to our left, I could feel a bit of a wind push but no tail wag and I felt in total control. But that was in light winds, and the following day we got the ultimate test. We had 20-30 mph cross winds with even higher gusts and high profile vehicle wind warnings. I started out maintaining the speed limit of 65 mph but was getting knocked around quite a bit by the wind, but the chassis still felt rock solid and responded well to the corrections I made to stay in my lane. As the traffic increased and the windy day wore on I backed it down to 60 mph and the RV became a dream to drive even with the high winds. It absolutely transformed this RV into something that was no longer scary to drive, but fun.

I highly recommend this chassis upgrade. I had a few options as far as who’s track bar to go with, I chose Blue Ox because of the thought they put into the design of the product and the extra strength they build into the unit. The exact manufacturing details are listed in the video.