Electric tongue jack...Dead battery????

jjjandrbaker wrote:
My new trailer has an electric tongue jack. I just went over to drop something off. The battery is dead. What does that mean for the tongue jack? Will I have to use a manual crank? Or, will it run if I hook it up to the truck?

I'm not all that impressed with the electric tongue jack. Takes forever to go up and down.

The correct answer to your problem depends on what you mean by "dead". Are you saying the battery is drawn down to the point where it doesn't have sufficient power to operate the tongue jack OR are you saying there is no 12 vdc power anywhere in the trailer? Have you measured it, do the interior lights show any signs of life - or not? If the battery is merely drawn down then simply plugging the trailer into your truck, especially with it running, will provide the necessary power to operate your tongue jack BUT then the obvious question is - why are you not disconnecting the battery, either physically or with a battery disconnect switch, whenever you put the trailer in storage so parasitic draw doesn't kill the battery over time? :h

OTOH, if plugging the trailer into your truck doesn't provide the necessary power to operate the tongue jack then you've blown a fuse or circuit breaker. The question is - is it just the tongue jack that won't operate or everything that runs on 12 vdc? :h If it's just the tongue jack then the inline fuse protecting it has likely blown but if nothing 12 vdc works then the most likely culprit is the circuit breaker connected inline with the cable connected to the battery positive terminal.

Sounds to me like you haven't even checked with a DVM yet to narrow down just what is happening here - so if not that's your next step.

As an aside I noticed you complaining on your blog about not being able to draw water properly from your 192RBS's fresh water tank. The reason is obvious, just as it was with my own 192RBS - your tank is sagging under the weight of water in it and Coachmen connected the pump's intake draw to a port halfway up the side wall of the tank. These are both correctable BUT until you do so you won't solve this issue, as I did and as shown in pics in my gallery. :)