Jacked up...

Getting things around your RV malfunction sucks, but it sucks a little less when they malfunction near to a nice RV repair shop.

While enjoying our visit to Albuquerque, when we tried to un-hitch, we discovered that our electric tongue jack was not working. This is the second time our electric jack acts up. The fist time was months ago in Canada while in Calgary. At that time, the culprit was water getting into the electric system of our Baker Level Rite 3000. This electric jack has a level bubble on its top, which is a nice touch. Unfortunately, that level bubble lets water right into the electric switch that operated the electrical motor.



At that time, we dried off the water, reconnected everything, and sealed the edges of the level bubble with silicon.



This second time around, the problem was not water. We feared a busted motor (~$300+ Labor), but some testing for 12v current reaching the jack circuits, suggested that maybe we had a bad cable somewhere.

We became acquainted with the "emergency/manual" procedure to operate the electric jack in case of malfunction. In the case of the Level Rite 3000, the procedure involved unscrewing 2 5mm allen bolts and remove the electric head to expose a T slot that can be operated with a small T wrench. Even with this small wrench, we needed to remove the propane tank cover, which is way too close to the jack. We realized that this close tight design wold limit our options to install a new electric jack (some are bigger than the Level Rite 300) and eliminates the option to install a manual operated jack.

We end up taking the whole thing for repair to the local Camping World. The service was fairly quick, and the mechanic confirmed that it was a bad cable. It was not clear how such a heavy duty cable went bad. According to the mechanic, motors like this, that go up and down, if reversed direction too quick, they will overload the cable or blow the fuse. But since our motor was equipped with a 30 amp slow blow fuse, the fuse did not blow, but the cable did.



The repair involved getting rid of the 30 amp slow blow fuse, and installing a regular fuse hook. A 40 amp fuse was installed and we will look for a 30 amp circuit breaker later to put in place.


So, after this, we are back at hitching up by the flick of a switch.
After this experience, I would say that for this size trailer, a manual jack is just fine, and one less thing to break and worry about. But as it turns, in our case this was not an option.