The most LA thing happened yesterday while I off-roaded my newly-acquired 1991 Jeep Wrangler: I spotted, stranded on that off-road trail, the enormous $1 million Ford F-550-based camper called the 27North Ascender 30A. It was just sitting there like a beached whale, immobile, with a winch rope slung over its driver’s side mirror. It took my friend Chris and me a few minutes to figure out what went wrong, but a quick peek underneath made it all clear: This thing had failed quickly and catastrophically.
I’m currently in the process of writing up how my bone-stock 1991 Jeep Wrangler did at Rowher Flats, a great off-road trail not far outside of LA. My friend Chris Rosales from The Drive had asked if I wanted to off-road with him and his Ford Bronco Sport press vehicle, so I slapped some new tires onto my YJ and headed out to the hills to find that, to be honest, the Bronco Sport and a bone-stock YJ are quite evenly matched on that kind of terrain.
While climbing one of the most challenging trails at the off-road park, Chris and I happened upon this:
Holy crap, it’s the ~$1 million 27North camper we saw (and wrote about) at the LA Auto Show! Look, my colleague Mercedes even took a photo of me in front of what looks like this very truck!:
This camper, by the way, is bonkers, as I’m sure you surmised by the seven-figure asking price. Just look at the interior!:
What was going on? Why was the machine just sitting there on the trail with the engine off and the winch line out? I yelled to see if someone was inside. Nope. The thing had been abandoned. What the hell had happened? Chris, a rather technically-savvy car journo, and I decided to assess the situation a bit.
First off, the truck appeared to be in a tight spot. The right rear tire was in a moderately-sized rut, and the front axle was articulating, with one tire up high and one down low:
You can see that the truck is so twisted up that the camper appears to be offset from the cab:
Is it possible that the driver had to apply some extra gas to get out of this precarious position, and this caused a failure? Or was the truck actually towed to this spot (as it was off to the side, allowing for others to easily drive past). It wasn’t clear if this was a factor.
We wondered if the driver had popped a tire, as the front right one looked fairly flat. But I think it had just been aired down; it looked flat because it was propped up on a bump. Hmm.
The front tires were pointing in approximately the same direction, so it hadn’t been a tie rod failure (a fairly common issue with larger vehicles), and there was no oil or coolant on the trail, so the engine hadn’t blown a rod through the oil pan and it probably wasn’t an overheating issue. I hopped down into the dirt to look underneath, and then things became clearer.
Aha! The rear driveshaft had come apart at its pillow block, and was being held up off the trail via ratchet straps. “Ah, they must have flexed out the suspension, and the driveshaft fell out. I’ve had that happen on my lifted Jeep XJ once before,” I thought to myself. But then I looked towards the front of the Ford F-550-based camper:
Holy crap!
Let’s zoom in on that a bit closer:
The driveshaft had come apart not due to the axle moving down and away from the transfer case during articulation; it had gotten shorter by twisting up like a wet towel ready to be snapped in a high school boys locker room.
Slight aside: That driveshaft, like most rear driveshafts for heavy trucks, is hollow, gaining its torsional stiffness via its second polar moment of area, which increases with diameter to the fourth power, so you can get a really stiff shaft — even if it’s hollow — by having a large outer diameter. This lets you keep the shaft light (imagine how heavy a driveshaft would have to be if it were solid!).
Yikes! So this thing really was stranded; I suppose it could try to drive out using only its front wheels, though I regret not having peeked at the state of the front drivetrain, as the added load on it was probably significant. I reached out to 27North’s CEO Paul Bosovik to get the lowdown on what happened here, and he was actually quite nice about answering my questions.
View this post on Instagram
“It was our prototype truck,” he said. “We had given it to [a media outlet] to do extreme off-road tests.” Apparently the vehicle was being put head-to-head with a Toyota 4Runner, so these trails were more inline with the 4Runner’s capabilities, the CEO implied. I would agree; both Chris and I were surprised to see this truck on this trail in the first place
As for what happened, Paul told me this: “Bearing seized up. That pressure damaged the driveshaft and twisted it. Now Ford is getting it towed back… to their facilities to rebuild the rear axle.”
Paul claims that a failed rear wheel bearing — a part that Ford has allegedly recalled (I haven’t been able to find the recall notice) — caused additional strain on the drivetrain, leading to the factory driveshaft twisting up like a pretzel. “It all came back to defective bearing and Ford’s been covering everything under warranty,” Bosovik told me over the phone.
I’m a bit skeptical about this for a number of reasons. First off, who off-roads a truck with a failed wheel bearing? Bosovik claims his team “hired one of the best drivers [they] could find,” so that seems a bit odd. Or did the wheel bearing catastrophically fail off-road? That seems unlikely to me.
Also, take a look at the photo above that Mercedes took at the LA Auto Show back in November. You’ll see that 27North converts dual rear-wheel (dually) F-550s into single rear-wheel trucks. This, you would think, would increase the moment arm on the wheel bearings, reducing their lifespan. How could that not be a factor in wheel bearing longevity? Bosovik told me his team hired an engineering company to assess their design, and that rear wheel bearing failure is actually due to Ford’s rear wheel bearing defect — an issue that has allegedly be plaguing other 4×4 camper companies like Earthroamer (I’ve reached out to Earthroamer to confirm). Bosovik says his company has now “transitioned to the new year model,” so these issues should be a thing of the past.
Anyway, it’s a 16,500 pound truck dry, and 18,500 pounds when filled up with fluids, per Bosovik. So go figure off-roading the crap out of it would strain the stock driveshaft.
We’ll find out from the media outlet that took this thing off-road how a wheel bearing seizure factored into this whole thing, why they took the truck off-road in the first place with a bad wheel bearing, or if this was just a case of too much weight plus too much pedal equals too much torsional strain on a stock driveshaft.
All I know is, this is yet another reminder that, no matter how badass and unstoppable a big truck might look, the reality is that size is a bad thing off-road. Not just because it makes maneuvering more difficult, but because that added weight puts lots of strain on components, and once you’re stranded in an 18,000 pound truck, getting it off the trail isn’t easy. The media outlet driving the 27North had to abandon it.
Update (June 5, 2023 2 PM E.T.): EarthRoamer’s CEO Scot Allen responded to my inquiry about wheel bearing failure, saying:
Ford did have an issue with F-550 rear wheel bearings during 2017-2019 due to non-Timken bearings being installed. This impacted approximately 15 of our vehicles in that timeframe. There was never an official recall, but Ford did require that replacement bearings be Timkin’s. EarthRoamer has since delivered over 100 F-550 based vehicles on 2020 and newer chassis with zero wheel bearing issues.In our opinion, to have a wheel bearing failure on a 2022 chassis would be due to a gross exceedance of the rear axle rating of 14,706lbs. We have seen the pictures of the 30A Ascender pulling a large ski boat and would never recommend that to our customers. We have never been able to see actual weights of the 30A Ascender, but would not be surprised if it exceeds GVWR when fully outfitted with water and gear.
Update (June 5, 2023 3 PM E.T.): Here’s a link to an EarthRoamer owner claiming a wheel bearing issue:
Updated (June 5, 2023 4:22 P.M. ET): Here’s how Scot Allen, CEO of EarthRoamer, responded to the Instagram image above, which was sent to The Autopian from Bosovik:
Greatly appreciate you updating your recent article with our comments.
Just FYI and to add context to the IG post that was added. ER93 did suffer a rear wheel bearing failure at over 70,000 miles and is a 2008 F-550. Not sure it’s great to compare a 15 year old vehicle to a brand new one when it comes to failures.
Too bad there isn’t some sort of salvage law akin to that for boats, you could have hauled it home got some cash
How to rescue a 23,000 pound Earth Roamer…
https://youtu.be/PEgAs1fROyY
That truck got shafted!
I’ll find my way out.
We all need to remember that, like most pickup trucks today, people aren’t buying the ACTUAL ability to do work and be tough. They’re buying the ability to LOOK like they do work and are tough. There is a huge difference.
I for one, commend whatever auto-journalist decided to take this RV actually off-road, and thereby highlight the above distinction! Brilliant.
Well, it’s Donut Media! Who would have thought!
When I first saw the close-up image of the front of the driveshaft, I thought it was a rubber boot of some kind. I guess I never realized those driveshafts were hollow, though that makes sense.
Reading DT go all “CSI” in this piece was fascinating and really informative. Great work.
Thank you!
You should stop by a junkyard and pick up a driveshaft from a heavy-duty truck. They’re incredibly light; you might think alarmingly so!
I think the F150 uses an aluminum one, my brother in law had his snap under 100km of use and it took a long time to get a new one
Virtually all RWD driveshafts are hollow, from an old 6 cylinder mustang to the biggest class 8 semi tractor. FWD half shafts are solid (& about 1” ± In diameter). Even IRS half shafts are hollow tubes.
98% positive it’s just too much weight.
and yeah, the rear wheels being that far out is TERRIBLE for the wheel bearing.
so… too much weight, truck broke trying to go uphill, blamed it on the bearing that they already strained (but I’m doubtful broke).
What a waste of money…
That thing needs more exterior speakers. The six I count are not nearly enough to completely drown out nature!
Hmmm, I wonder if they didn’t hear the sound of metal twisting because of driving with deafening doof-doof?
Where I live, we are now back in the season where we see 4×4 Unimogs and Ivecos as well as 6×6 Mann expedition RVs on a regular basis. The most common spotting of these rigs is in a supermarket parking lot of the major cities. They start congregating at the Walmart/Canadian Tire in Whitehorse before moving north and west. I’ve seen one of these rigs actually on the Denali Highway, but I’ve seen far more Prevost buses run by Princess and Holland America on the same highway.
I 100% agree with the nearly unanimous opinion that these things are too big and too heavy to seriously off-road. At the same time, I am impressed that someone (maybe not the owner) took this pig on a serious off-road trail. They broke it, but if you don’t break something, you’re not really trying.
I have mixed emotions about these things. I partially admire them for exploring the world in their luxury rigs throughout the globe. I also question how these owners justify their 10 mpg rigs driving around the world to see the very natural wonders that they are destroying via their fossil fuel consumption.
This convinces me that a Tatra military truck is,the right answer for an off road camper. These 8×8 beasts are the favorite
support vehicles for Paris Dakar type events.
The one that goes home costs $2 million.
A 2023 F550 4×4 crew cab chassis MSRPs for $72,000. A well-appointed Lance 1575 couples trailer MSRPs for around $60,000. I guess the additional $868,000 buys you a bunch of LEDs, a bitchin’ sound system and 5 gallons of bed liner goo.
As the owner of a “well-appointed:” Lance, this is equivalent to saying you could take a double-wide, add hardwood floors, and get a $2,000,000 home with $1,800,000 left over. I don’t know exactly what the cost to build a custom one-off RV is, but I do know that they cost a lot more to build than one would think.
ok, so then what does the extra $700,000 buy you?
My point was that if you look at the square footage and type of materials used to build a Lance 1575, it’s very similar to the size of the black box bolted on the back of the truck with the pretzeled drive shaft. If Lance can build and sell a decent little trailer for $60,000.00, why do the same materials, cut into different shapes and arranged a bit differently cost 3/4 of a million dollars more? Is the exclusivity worth $868,000.00? I didn’t think it was.
Rory just rescued an Earth Romer on his channel, they are so heavy it broke the road it was on and slid a wheel off. And it makes for a tough recovery, damn heavy.
I can’t understand why that has a million dollar price tag. You can charge any price. Seems very excessive.
Yeah, half that seems more acceptable.
Have you looked at the price of bed liner lately?
Perfect comment is perfect
Because someone is willing to pay that price
IMO Timken bearings turned into a big pile of poo right around 2018. We used to exclusively use Timken bearings, but switched to exclusively NOT timken bearing in our 24 hours of lemons race cars roughly 5 years ago. Went from being able to easily do a full season on a set of bearings, to can’t finish even half a race before they seize. Our problem was mainly heat related and was partially mitigated by switching to 2 piece rotors and lots of ducting but even with that they’re fragile and unlikely to last more than about 10 hours.
That’s about the time a lot of Timken’s production shifted to China. I remember this because I was working for an online distributor of auto parts at the time and started to get customer complaints about us sending counterfeit Timken bearings because the box said Made in China. I had to dig up some info from Timken to show to customers that they had moved some production to China to prove we were selling legit products.
This is in no way a universal commentary on the quality of products coming out of China, as I’ve had to explain to plenty of boomers over the years that it’s not just WHERE the product was made, but who is making it and under what QC processes.
Agree on that last point… Being made in China is not an automatic indicator of quality. Their metallurgy and tolerances can be every bit as good as anything mass produced in Europe or the US, the only difference being that instead of presenting the 4 known good metals as an option to a potential customer when quoting a job to get something manufactured, they’ll present 300 options, and the company contracting out the manufacturing can’t seem to move past the fact that metal with a hardness of milk chocolate is 3% the cost of tool steel and just might make it to the end of the warranty period, if used gingerly.
I have no doubt that both the best and worst factories in the world are in China
Who are you using then? I’ve used Timken for years, next time I order a wheel bearing what brand should I be looking for? SKF?
Oh man. Having driven a heavily loaded (15000lb+ ) F-550 around parks and ravines, down double track, through ditches, etc. I just can’t imagine driving something like this anywhere remote.
These trucks are only designed to carry that much weight under ideal (flat pavement) conditions. The upgraded tires and suspension (as good as they may be) only move the needle towards driving across a grassy field or construction site, not long distances on rough terrain. These trucks are amazing in terms of what you can haul without a CDL, but every part of the chassis and drivetrain is stressed just using them as intended from the factory. There is a reason a solid third of the F-550s at my old company blow up or wear out around 100,000km… and they never leave the district.
If you’re going to max out a 550s GVWR for 100% of its life, you’d really be better off with a medium duty truck. Off road? Forget about it.
That reminds me of the time TFL did some max tow rating tests (different from their usual “Ike Gauntlet” routine) on half-tons. They overheated an F150’s transmission (GM and Ram did ok). It occurred to me that there was a fairly narrow butter zone for frequency of max towing a 150(0) since if it’s a daily occurrence you want the extra margins of safety and durability of an HD pickup and if it’s any less frequent than monthly you’re better off buying a Civic and overheating U-Haul’s transmission instead of your own…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OX98vv7jmA
I think it was a GM, but they have managed to pushed all manufacturers to the breaking point.
Ford & GM shared in the development of the 10spd transmission. I do believe that GM did a little better in programming the trans.
I hear that advice a lot, but it’s really unrealistic… try to find a rental to tow with on a holiday weekend. Even if you can find a company to rent one (they are not easy to find), they are sold out unless you plan WAYY in advance.
Depends on the weight towed as well. Under 7,500lbs or so (maybe less for some configs) the half-ton is probably just fine towing daily as well. It’s when you’re getting up to the limits for long stretches that it starts to be a bad plan.
IMHO you just cant use a vehicle built for on road load hauling to create a moon sized off roader. Maybe an RV for trail driving camping but not 4 wheeling.
I bet Rowher was a blast in a bone stock YJ. Cant wait to see what other trails you will hit in CA.
Why are there 3 ratchet straps holding the rear axle up? I get they might have been winching down and didnt want it to hang up, but wouldn’t one strap get the job done?
Unless they were trying to keep the driveshaft centered? As if the center driveshaft bearing blew out and it was wobbling around so they tried to snug it center with 3 straps from different sides.
My money is that they wrapped up the drive shaft which pulled the center bearing apart, so they strapped up the rear portion and tried to run in front wheel drive. It looks like the broken driveshaft also took out the DEF injector, which likely put the vehicle in limp-home mode. Limp home plus FWD on an off-road trail would likely sink a brick like this.
“…But it looks so cool on Instagram!”
I’ve ridden every trail in Rowher on a $400 dirt bike. Money don’t buy skills.
BUT… and here’s where you’re missing the point, it looks so cool in Instagram!
Also can’t wait to see one of these sink in mud somewhere…
Where’s Mat’s Off Road Recovery when you need them? 😀
Trail Mater (which operates east of where MORR does) yanked an Earthroamer out of a predicament a little bit back; was posted on their channel over the weekend.
Finders = keepers 🙂
How do you even make a truck camper weigh that much? Marble countertops and flagstone floors? We love our old Elkhorn, and the best thing about it is that we can tow a 7000# GVWR horse trailer without exceeding gross combined weight.
Just looking at that last picture again of the rear tire. It looks like all the weight is on the inside edge of the wheel. Wouldn’t that put a lot a strain on the hub assembly?
Yes, it’s like the cars/trucks you see with “bow legs” via spacers. Greatly increasing the bearing loads via leverage. Throw in some off road g-loadings and “the hard part is acting surprised” when it breaks.