Table of Contents
Newmar Bay Star Sport Bathroom Upgrades
Well, it only took one night of camping in our Newmar Bay Star Sport for us to realize that we needed to do something different about our shower. With two of us showing and breakfast dishes complete we had our grey tank showing 45% full. Yikes! We used to camp for six days in our Premier travel trailer on the same size grey tanks. What is different?
I’m not sure why but Newmar uses a single handle shower control and a shower head with no shutoff. With the single handle you basically only control the temperature but flow is always at max. We swapped out the factory shower head to the Hanlian High Pressure Shower Head with Pause Button. Easy 2 minute swap.
We also purchase a Splash Home Adora Stainless Steel Toilet Brush for the bathroom. We had a plastic toilet brush and this better fit the decor of the Newmar coach. Not needed but aesthetically better.
Newmar Bay Star Sport Suspension Upgrades
Gas coaches do not drive like a car! This is just not with the Newmar Bay Star Sport but inherent to gas coaches built on the Ford F53 chassis. I realized going into this that it is a big box bolted to a truck chassis but did not expect the handling to be what it is. I found that the dealer had not inflated the tires to the proper 95 psi upon our pickup and thought this was some of the issue. Well, it wasn’t. After two hours of see sawing the steering wheel to keep it straight on the road, we decided to add some upgrades to tame the beast.
SuperSteer® SS401 Rear Trac Bar
The SuperSteer line is all about improving the handling/ride of motorhomes. The SuperSteer® SS401 Rear Trac Bar is designed to help stabilize the tail wag generated when the coach moves side to side in the rear by locking creating a rigid pivot point from the axle differential to the coach frame. This controls side shift of the rear axle and will make your steering more controlled and responsive.
Our first suspension upgrade made a notable change after installation of the SuperSteer SS401 rear trac bar. This was a fairly easy installation requiring no drilling and the only modification was clipping a couple wire tires on the frame rail to allow the frame bracket room to slide in. Once the bracket was installed, the wiring was just tied back to it’s original location.
This unit took out most of the tail wag and see-saw steering when trekking down the highway. I also notice there is not as much of that initial push when going into corners. Driving the coach after this was the first time I felt confident in driving one handed without the coach moving into one of the lines on the highway.
SuperSteer SS404RR Front Radius Rods
After the rear trac bar, I installed the Supersteer SS404RR Front Radius Rods. The solid front axle suffers from front to back movement due to the length of the leaf springs coupled with the soft bushing mounts. The radius rods lock the front axle front to back while still allowing full travel up and down.
I could tell there was even more stability and less steering corrections needed once the install of the radius rods was complete. If time would have allowed, I thought about removing the bar from the trac bar setup to see how much the radius rods improved the drive as a stand alone upgrade. I see a lot of comments on the internet about which is the best upgrade but it is had too tell once you start the upgrade process.
This install took a little more time than the first upgrade. The 1/2″ hole on the passengers side frame rail on our coach needed the hole drilled through to 1/2″, there were some lines running in the drivers side frame rail that made starting the washer and nut challenging, and the drivers side sway bar mount had to be reamed up to 1/2″ to accept the new bolts that came with the kit.
Safe-T-Plus 41-230 Steering Stabilizer
There are several RV owners singing the praise of adding a steering stabilizer to their gas coach. Safe-T-Plus and the Roadmaster Reflex. These are both self centering steering stabilizers that will with road wandering, oversteer, crosswinds, and driver fatigue. One of the biggest selling points is the stabilizer will help you maintain control should you have a blowout on one of your steer wheels.
Both the Safe-T-Plus and the Roadmaster get great reviews and should work equally the same. I preferred the inner springs of the Safe-T-Plus over the exposed springs of the Roadmaster in making my decision. The 41-230 is for Class A coaches and the mounting hardware is sold separately specific to the year/model of your chassis. I was going to install during the other upgrades but did not have enough room for my impact gun to remove the two nuts from the spring U-bolts and also found out they are metric on ours so I need some more tools. I’ll add later when we get back from our trip out West.
SnapPad for EQ Leveling System
I’ve had the SnapPad on my fifth wheel and loved them so it made since to add these to the Newmar Bay Star Sport also. The leveling feet are a little further in than the fifth wheel so having these eliminates crawling under the unit to places boards or pads under the leveling jacks.
The SnapPad helps by giving a larger footprint so it is less likely to push the feet into softer surfaces and even asphalt. Also, many campgrounds want to protect their concrete and require that something be placed onto the leveling foot to do so. It also provides some grip on uneven surfaces providing more stability.
The SnapPad is made in the USA and is made from recycled tires. Double check your leveling foot before ordering as there are several variations out there.
Miscellaneous Items
Magic Chef Countertop Ice Maker
Anna loves to make cold drinks for everyone while we are out and it can be time consuming to make enough ice in an RV refrigerator so she said it was time for an ice maker. I looked at several and they all seem to be in the same realm of 26 lbs of ice in 24 hours for the smallest units. I was looking for two things that were different in the pack; warranty and insulation.
The first thing you need to understand about these is the cooling part of the ice maker just makes ice. The compartment where the ice is stored is not cooled so the ice will begin to melt and the water go back into the reservoir getting recycled again. Some units only had a single layer clear lid which wouldn’t provide much insulation while the Magic Chef has a small viewing window built into an insulated door. Also color is important if you will be using the unit outside. Black will absorb heat so go with stainless or a light color to reflect the heat to keep the ice longer.
The warranty on some of the units can be as low as 90 days. The Magic Chef comes with a one year parts and labor warranty as well as a five year compressor warranty. I don’t buy things assuming they will break but these things are known not to last for long.
We filled it up and tested it at home and like advertised we got our first batch of large cubes in seven minutes. It took about 1 hour 20 minutes to completely fill the tray to the point that we got a full tray warning. 4th of July is almost here so we will give it a test this coming week making lemon blueberry slushies (with some Gin of course) to help beat the heat!
We will continue to add as we find more things that we need for our new motorhome. Thanks for stopping by!
Check out our story on how we went from a fifth wheel to Class A Motorhome.