excersizing levelers

[olly72]

Hi All:  I have been told to excersize my powergear levelers at least once a month.  We are staying in Montana for four months and will be set up the entire time.  Is it safe to lower the rig with the  full side slide out to do this.  thanks  Russ

 

[billl70]

Hi All:  I have been told to excersize my powergear levelers at least once a month.  We are staying in Montana for four months and will be set up the entire time.  Is it safe to lower the rig with the  full side slide out to do this.  thanks  Russ

Personaly i would take the opertunity to exercise the slideouts at the same time.

 

[carson]

IMHO... All mechanical moving things are designed to do work. If you leave them sit idle they start to deteriorate. That includes an adjustable crescent wrench to a complete RV, well sort of..

The human body suffers the same way.

 

[Ned]

What is your procedure for leveling, slide out first or level first?  If you extend the slideout then level, you can retract the jacks and relevel without moving the slideout.  If the correct procedure is to level before extending the slideout, then bring it in before cycling the jacks.

That said, we've never cycled our jacks when parking for months at a time and not had any problems as a result.

 

[John Canfield]

HWH jacks do not need to be exercised periodically per HWH but I have no idea what Power Gear's requirement is - give them a call and let us know.

 

[joey]

HWH does not recommend exercising jacks, however, they do recommend once a year to fully extend jacks, wipe clean with towel, coat with thin layer of vasoline, run jacks up, back down and clean excess vasoline off.. Power gear/ kwikee, I am not sure of, but I have used same process on their equipment and have seen great results. I have seen this most commonly when jacks stopping 1-2" of full retraction.

 

[SargeW]

The Powergear jacks that I had on my 2010 Journey did recommend cycling the jacks periodically when you were going to be set up for a length of time.  They also recommended wiping the jack tubes with a silicone spray every few weeks to protect them from the elements.  If you were within a few miles of the beach (salt air) then they recommended every 3-4 days. 

 

[driftless shifter]

Don't know doodely about levelers, know a bit about hydraulics. Cycle hydraulic cyinders occasionally to prevent even the beginning of rust. The shiny, smooth ram is a sealing surface, a rubber seal holds the hydro pressure. Any rust, even the color of rust just beginning to form, is highly abrasive to the seal. Being a linear seal vs a rotational seal is worse. Any abrasion to the seal will be directional, carving a little channel directly through the sealing surface of the seal. If you don't want to cycle them wipe 'em down with motor oil, every bit of the exposed sealing length of the ram. No worries if left retracted for a season.

Mass. hoisting engineer for near 30 years now. It's just a fancy name for a heavy equipment operator, and another fee(not a tax) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

edit: Premptive response about wiper seals. They wipe dirt and debris off the ram and coast right over rust. The rust continues on through the pressure seal.

Bill

 

[Director]

Any idea why my HWH levelers are s l o w to retract ? Takes over five minutes.

 

[John Canfield]

Cold fluid and/or weak retraction springs are likely guesses.

 

[yoda2405]

I had my front passenger jack worked on by the dealer and Winnebgo twice before they seem to have finally fixed. The solution as reported by Winnebago was to loosen the torque on the mounting straps holding the jack in place. They said they were over torqued which distorted the jack causing it to bind and the springs would not retract the jacks.
This was done in May and so far they have worked as expected since then.

Good Luck,

 

[John Canfield]

David - circa 2005 HWH received a bad batch of retraction springs from their vendor, not enough tension in the spring.  Interesting about torque on the mounting straps...

 

[yoda2405]

I got the impression thay had found several coaches with this issue, not sure what the root cause was, but as long as they work and don't fall of I will be happy.
Happy Travels,

 

[JCMSr]

We have HWH leveling jacks on our RV.  I have read all of the HWH guidelines in which they say that their jacks do not need to be cleaned/serviced on a regular basis.  If you have nothing else to do and do not care to have to sit and wait 5 or 10 minutes for the jacks to retract I say do nothing. Otherwise I recommend that every 4 to 6 weeks you fully extend the jacks, wipe each cylinder down thoroughly and liberally with automatic transmission fluid, cycle the jacks up and down a couple of times and then wipe off any excess fluids.  Whenever I get the sense that my jacks are starting to be slow to retract I perform this maintenance and find that the time will go from 5 minutes or more to less than 60 seconds. 

Prior to discovering this little gem and while still under the manufacturers warranty I had the jacks worked on at least two or three separate occasions.  All springs were replaced with heavier springs and two out of four solenoids were replaced.  Each time the jacks would work fine for a while and then gradually be back to being slow, slow and slower.  In my opinion, the longer you stay in one place and allow the cylinders to collect dust and dirt plus allow the rubber seals to dry out the more this procedure makes sense.  Also, for anyone camping near the coastlines where the salt air is allowed to collect it is just good insurance to take these precautions.  JMHO.... I would rather spend 30 minutes being proactive rather than an extra 5 or 10 minutes waiting on the jacks to retract every time we change campgrounds (which is normally about every two weeks).

 

[John Canfield]

I wipe mine down with pure silicon spray a couple of times a year.