It’s time to pick up and move to a new adventure! Weather is perfect, mid-week, little traffic. Time to bring the slides in and raise the leveling jacks. “Hey, the @#$&* left front jack won’t come up. It started but stopped short.”
“Honey, put ‘em back down, please!” Guess it’s time to crawl under and wipe ‘em down and relubricate ‘em again. No matter where we seem to park, it always seems to be over the roughest ground. Now we’re ready to try again, my spouse saying, “Ok, they’re clean and oiled! Bring ‘em up please.” %@#$%!! They still didn’t fully retract. We can’t drive with them down, even a little.
We cycle them, wipe them, and oil them again. Still no joy. They keep stopping about two inches from fully retracting. My spouse tried pushing them up by hand, to no avail. There wasn’t enough room to get a 2” x 4” board under them. Like a bolt of lightning…he remembered we purchased a heavy-duty 36” pry bar that was stowed in our Jeep for when we went four wheeling. Duh!
We retrieved the pry bar from the Jeep. If it worked, it will be worth ten times its price. Remembering our high school science class where that weird science teacher taught us about levers, we decided to try the pry bar. We found a rock that was reasonably flat on one side. Next, placed the flat tip of the pry bar under the jack with the rock about six inches from the far end and pushed down. Voila! The jack went up smoothly. Maybe that science teacher was smarter than a fifth grader!
A Forrest Gump idea.
This is a common occurrence with leveling jacks. They can be temperamental at times. Heat, dust, moisture, and constant weather changes wreak havoc on metal. We had recently replaced the retraction springs not more than six months ago during our mid-year service check-up. Even when we’re parked for a couple of months, we regularly clean, lubricate and exercise these pistons. During the cleaning/lubricating regimen, it’s important to feel for burrs or abrasions on the piston’s surface. The surface can be polished with a 1500 grit wet/dry cloth. Lastly, we check the hydraulic oil reservoir to ensure that it has the correct amount of fluid. But remember, even when all is in order, Forrest Gump said, “It Happens”.
Read the edited article published March 6, 2021 here:
RV jacks won’t retract? Try this – RV Travel
Kate Doherty has been writing for more than 30 years in technical and general media. In her previous business, she and her spouse dealt with special projects within the military/government sector. Recently she published “Masquerade: A Logan Scott Novel” under the pen name Bryan Alexander, a thriller now available in eBook and paperback on Amazon. It’s a page-turner!