In the constant search for camping trailer stabilization, I finally pulled the trigger on X-Chock Wheel Stabilizer. With a full house in the trailer (2 kids, wife, dog, and me) it’s always been a struggle to keep the trailer as motionless as possible. After having added blocks, standard wheel chocks, and even extra X-Chock Wheel X-Chock Wheel Stabilizer jacks; I thought, “let’s give these a shot”Now, this review is in the early stages as the camping season is slowly creeping its way here at the time of this review. I plan on updating the review after I’ve gotten a few solid months of use under our belt.
As always, they came in quickly and packaged well. I opened the box up to inspect and was actually surprised as to how small these are in person. To the point that I was not even sure they would fill the gap between my tires. I had a closer look at them and was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a bit of grease already applied.
I also like that they throw in a ratcheting wrench for you to use. Right away I decided I would just spin them open to see. I found them to be pretty tight to open and close. The plates were also pretty tight. This is a good thing as you don’t want everything to loosen up on you. After opening them all the way up and measuring, I got 10.75″ as a span. You would be very hard-pressed to get the 15″ advertised in the listing.
After being satisfied that everything was intact and working right, I took them out to the trailer to dry fit them. I was glad to see that these were, in fact, going to fit the gap between my tires. In my application, I have a plastic skirt that makes it difficult to install in an upright position. I simply flipped it upside down and cranked it down. The long bolt just fit perfectly in between the skirting’s braces as well so that was lucky.
Now here is where I’m a bit concerned. Once I fit it to the tire gap, I noticed that these were not very squared up and seemed to have been bound a bit. They opened and closed smoothly, but the shoes didn’t all sit flat on the tires. (You can see that in one of my images). Now I’m sure with some fiddling, I’ll get it as flat as possible. I was able to get them to be pretty tight too.I didn’t want to overdo it as they did seem that they possibly would not be able to take too much pressure. They actually feel like they may bend if you pushed them too far. Now I know that most people say they need to be pretty tight in order to be effective so time will tell. I also really like that they added the feature to be able to lock them up as these types of things tend to grow legs when you’re not around. The only issue here though is that you’re limited to a pretty small lock to fit those holes.
Overall, they seem to fit well and are fairly easy to set up. Once we get some actual use out of them, then I’ll provide an update. After all, you buy these for decreasing the trailer movement. 🙂
