Can’t get motorhome off leveling jack

tvfrfireman wrote:

SuperBus wrote:
You may have an intermittently failing leveling valve on that corner (for your air bags). If that is the case, obviously you'd want to get it replaced to resolve the issue. But, in the meantime, dumping air using your jack controller might correct the issue by moving the leveler through some of its stroke, thus getting it to allow air back into the air bag and raise that corner of the coach back up.

Thank you Super bus for your assessment. I am sorry I have not enough experience in these systems to understand what you think I should do. If there is something I could read that would help me to understand I would be grateful. I don’t understand what the jacks have to do with the leveler. Are these two different systems (the jacks and the self leveler)? All the jacks retract fully. It is that the front left jack was sitting fast on the wood block when the night before there was plenty of room between the block and the pad.

Well, don't thank me yet, I could be wrong! :)

They are separate systems, the valve I am referring to is part of your suspension. It is a valve mounted on the chassis with a linkage connected to your axle/wishbone/etc., set to a certain length. The job of this valve is to maintain ride height of your coach when the air suspension is active (i.e. your engine is on). For example, if you add a bunch of weight to a corner of your coach, the weight would cause the airbag to compress some. The linkage on the leveler will then move in conjunction with the connected suspension component, and the valve in the leveler will open an allow some pressurized air into your airbag to regain the ride height lost due to the compression caused by the extra weight. Vice versa, if weight is removed from the corner, the airbag would get taller, and the leveler valve would let some air out of the bag to get back to the same height.

The reason I suggested you consider this as a potential failure point is that when you level your coach, your airbags most likely exhaust thus lowering your coach and stroking the leveler valve to one extreme range of its motion, an area it doesn't go to often. From personal experience, I found a bad valve won't allow the airbag to fill back up properly after you've restarted the coach and raised the jacks. This would result in your jack pad still being in contact with the ground/block of wood/etc., not because the jack has an issue, but because the suspension did not fill up and lift that corner of the coach. As the block is taking up the small amount of clearance that would have normally been between the ground and the jack, it is still in contact.