HWH Jack repair

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Al Hall

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Joined
Jan 7, 2010
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4
I have a 1988 33' Foretravel Gran Villa with HWH Jacks.  The jacks work fine but the acuators on the rear jacks that put them in the down position are frozen in place and I am looking for suggestions on how to free them short of replacing them.  Rebuilt ones are over $100 each.  I have tried soaking them in "blaster" penetrating oil for several days but to no avail.    Heat?  Beat?  Pull?  Any suggestions out there? 
Additionally, if I do have to replace them, does the hydraulic system need to be bled to get out any air when I am done? :(
 
Hi Al - welcome aboard!!  Haven't heard about the need to do any bleeding after jack replacement.  Give HWH a call and run your questions by them - they are incredibly helpful.
 
I second John's recommendation to call HWH, as they helped me. If I ever had made it to IA with my Friendship I was going to have them checked at their factory!
 
Hello Al,
I am in the same situation and was just posting a reply in the Motorhome forum.  My system was sitting for sometime before I purchased my 1995 unit that has the HWH series 310 system.  My actuators are frozen also and I tried many of the things you have when it came to soaking them in blaster, wd40, brake fluid, etc.  Nothing seems to work.  They seem complex to take apart and rebuild myself, but I might experiment.  I emailed HWH and here is what they responded with.

"If you want to replace the jacks you would order rap7164 for the front and they will cost you $359.10 each plus freight. The rears would take rap7001 and they will cost you $547.05each plus freight. Right now I am out of both these jacks and we are looking at about four weeks before I can ship them.

Now if you want to repair the ones you have it will cost you for the front jacks $251.37 maximum each to repair them and the rear ones would cost you a maximum of $382.94 each plus freight. Now if you decide to send them in for repair you will need what we call an rga#, please do not send them in for repair without that number. The turn around time on these is running about three weeks."


Granted this is for rebuilding the entire jack, but we can also order replacement parts, although the individual parts seemed kind of high and since I don't know if my jacks really work, I am not sure what to do.

Hopefully we'll both learn something new from our posts.

Andrew
 
do you think the piston is frozen in the cylinder or is the hydraulic line clogged/frozen?

If it is a rust/frozen cylinder you could take the jack to a machine shop with a press and put some pressure on the jack and try to "break it loose", the penetrating fluid will help with this.  If it is a clogged or frozen solenoid valve/fitting/etc you could remove the hydraulic line and then turn the pump on briefly to see if you are getting hydraulic fluid thru the lines and try to blow the clogged debris out... Be careful since hi pressure fluid is very dangerous...

On the other hand, if there is a broken or worn out part, maybe the rebuilt unit is a bargain.  It doesn't take much work to run up a $100 bill in a machine shop.  JMHO.
 
I did contact HWH and they told me it sounded like the kick down cylinders are frozen.  I agree.  On these type jacks, the kick down cylinder is mounted on the side of the jack and I believe the real fix is to replace the actuators (rebuilt from hwh for $105 each).  I was looking for a way to "unstick" these cylinders and save the expense of replacing them.    The jacks still work fine; I just have to pull them down and push them back up when I use them.  I appreciate the feed back and I believe I have enough info to make a decision on what to do next.  Thanx to all.
 

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