Fresh water tanks can tear loose inside 552 Starcraft and 489 Highland Ridge travel trailers

Beneath certain Starcraft Super Lite Maxx and Highland Ridge Range Lite Air travel trailers, a fresh water tank rides on supports held by screws that can fatigue and let go. NHTSA lists 552 Starcraft trailers in campaign 26V626000 and 489 Highland Ridge trailers in the sibling campaign 26V627000, all built for model years 2022 through 2024. The shared defect description reads that fasteners may fail, causing the fresh water tank to detach.

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The failure is gradual rather than sudden. In Starcraft’s filing with NHTSA, loading and unloading stress fatigues the fasteners until the tank can dislodge and fall to the ground when it is full or overfilled, and the company identified no warning before it happens. The screw in question is a black pan-head Tek screw, part number 0052247, passed through a tier-two distributor, Global Link Distribution of Elkhart, Indiana. Starcraft estimates that 5 percent of its trailers carry the defect.

Tek screws, a frame change and 29 warranty claims in Starcraft’s filing

The Starcraft side of the story runs through the NHTSA campaign record for 26V626000, which puts the population at 552 trailers and describes the hazard plainly: a detached tank can become a road hazard for other vehicles and raise the risk of a crash. The company’s Part 573 safety recall report says the trailers were built between July 30, 2021 and January 11, 2024, and that the company counted 29 claims between December 2022 and August 2024. It reports no crashes and no injuries.

The chronology in that report is unusually granular. Starcraft’s compliance staff received a consumer complaint, vehicle owner questionnaire 11752731, on July 28, 2026 and began searching for similar failures. A warranty review committee elevated the matter on August 3, a product-safety panel asked for design and installation research two days later, and on August 19 it decided to share test data with NHTSA. On September 2 that panel found a frame switch for the 2022 and 2023 model years, from the supplier Norco to LCI, alongside the roughly 5 percent incident rate. A steering committee voted for a recall on September 24, 58 days after the complaint arrived.

The filing also records a production fix: the frame was switched back to one on which the nut was installed. That detail locates the weakness in how the tank supports were fastened rather than in the tank itself. Starcraft’s own description is that loading and unloading fatigued the screws, and the corrective hardware it prescribes, a through-bolt with a nut and washer behind it, is a different kind of joint from a self-tapping screw driven into a frame member.

Highland Ridge’s sibling campaign 26V627000 and its 489 trailers

Highland Ridge filed on the same day, September 30, 2026, and the campaign record for 26V627000 carries the same defect text and the same fix for 489 Range Lite Air trailers across model years 2022, 2023 and 2024. Highland Ridge’s own recall number is 9904669, against Starcraft’s 9902669, and both records give the same customer-service line, 1-800-283-8267. NHTSA files both under potable water storage tanks, the component class for recreational trailers, which is why the two sit side by side in the agency’s data.

Combined, the two campaigns reach 1,041 trailers, and both appear among the entries in the agency’s recall dataset for reports received between September 29 and October 7, the listing the figures here were checked against. The filing for the Highland Ridge trailers was not separately read for build dates or claim counts, so the Starcraft numbers above should not be assumed to carry over. What the two records share is the model-year span, the fastener failure and the remedy.

Redrilled holes and one-inch grade 5 bolts

Dealers will not simply tighten what is there. The remedy in the Starcraft filing is to remove the Tek screws from the fresh tank supports, redrill the existing holes, and secure the tank with one-inch grade 5 bolts, a 3/8-inch nut and a washer on the back side of each bolt. The campaign record summarizes the Highland Ridge repair the same way: redrill the holes and install new screws and bolts, at no charge to the owner.

Timing differs depending on which document is read. NHTSA’s campaign record says owner letters were mailed October 6, 2026. The Part 573 report, by contrast, lists October 30, 2026 as the remedy owner-notification date and the day the VIN search opens, and describes the recall as phased, with no dealer notification listed. Owners of a 2022 to 2024 trailer who want to confirm whether a specific unit is included can use NHTSA’s lookup page for campaign 26V626 once the VIN data is posted, or call the manufacturer quoting 9902669 or 9904669.

The arithmetic is worth setting beside the claim count. Starcraft’s estimate that 5 percent of its trailers carry the defect works out to roughly 28 of the 552 Super Lite Maxx units, and the 29 claims it counted between December 2022 and August 2024 sit almost exactly there. The recall nonetheless covers every trailer in the build range, and the filing’s reimbursement section says only that a general plan is on file. Starcraft’s report is dated October 1, while NHTSA logged its receipt on September 30.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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