Tongue Jack Sticking

[dmiller226]

My travel trailer has an electric tongue jack. Recently, if the trailer has been sitting unused for awhile, when I hit the switch to raise or lower, nothing happens. Seems like not getting any power. Doesn't matter whether operating off of the battery or shore power. The light switch on it works but it will not raise or lower. What I've noticed is that when I use my tool to manually crank it, all I have to do is turn it a couple of turns and then the electric switch works again....like it was stuck. This only happens when the jack hasn't been used for awhile. Once I get it running, it will work fine for a couple of days. Anything longer and it seems dead again until I manually begin to crank it. What would the problem be?

 

[Rene T]

May just need some lubrication. The brand and model number of the jack may help us help you.

 

[dmiller226]

It's a Stromberg Carlson. Not sure of the particular model as I see nothing on it except the brand and load limit.

 

[Rene T]

Don't know if this is your model, but it may help you. It does say to lightly lubricate moving parts and it does have a circuit breaker that trips. What may be happening is that the metal parts are sticking, the breacker trips then you manually operate the jack freeing up the unlubricated parts and in the meantime, the breaker resets itself and you're good to go.

https://www.strombergcarlson.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JET-2500.pdf

 

[dmiller226]

Thanks. I'm going to give lubrication a try and see if that takes care of it. I won't know for sure until it sits idle for awhile. I got it unstuck and running yesterday and it still works fine today.

 

[Robert Clark]

I really like the RAM jack. I put it on my 26′ travel trailer which has to be raised and lowered several times to hitch it up and then connect the stabilizer bars. I had a two-level back fusion a little less than a year ago and all of the crankings up and down was pretty tough. It was easy to hook up- one wire to the battery and one wire to the trailer frame. If your frame is painted you will need sand down to bare metal to get a good ground. This was a good jack for the price- I?m just waiting to see how long it lasts since it wasn?t terribly expensive. If you haven?t used an electric jack before they are slow and somewhat noisy but probably no slower than cranking.
https://www.smartrving.net/best-electric-trailer-jacks/

 

[Rene T]

The OP had this problem almost a year ago and didn?t get back to us with the results. Hopefully he?ll see this post and reply.

 

[dmiller226]

The OP had this problem almost a year ago and didn?t get back to us with the results. Hopefully he?ll see this post and reply.

Haven't been back around here much lately and realized Rene was right....I never followed up with results.

Lubrication did the job. I sprayed some silicone lub on it and haven't had the problem since.

 

[Rene T]

Haven't been back around here much lately and realized Rene was right....I never followed up with results.

Lubrication did the job. I sprayed some silicone lub on it and haven't had the problem since.

That?s awesome. Thanks for getting back to us. This may help others.