wrvond wrote:
Larry,
FIrst, I'd like to let you know I took no offense at your post. You should, however, get a job coaching those people on the television commercials that make the simplest things look impossible to accomplish without whatever product is being hawked. ;)
Second, those scissor jacks are flimsy. They are also what came on the camper. I do own a set of jacks like you describe. They came with my first camper, which did not have scissor jacks. I used them at first, but they have their own set of drawbacks, which I'll not go into here, as I see this as a discussion rather than a debate. Anyway, I went to the junk yard and purchased four scissor jacks from wrecked cars and installed on my camper, which I always thought worked quite well.
As I said, this camper came with the scissor jacks. I would have preferred the newer single leg angular jacks (don't know what they're called), but I got what I got. They came with a socket on the end of a long handle that I use to crank them up and down with. Works really well and doesn't require batteries. The locking nuts on the strong arms are the same size and use the same wrench. Also, those nuts won't fall out. They do not have to be tightened when in the stowed position. They also do not require any special cleaning or lubrication. When I clean the undercarriage of the camper, they are right there and easily sprayed off. They take all of 5 minutes or less to deploy, do a great job of stabilizing my camper, and I like 'em.
1. My battery and other comments about the electric screwdriver is one of the often main arguments on how convenient deploying the stab jacks are and you can obviously do it manually with the crank like you have chosen to do. Almost every thread about stab jacks tauts how great of an idea it is to use the electric drill/screw driver with an extension to raise lower the stab jacks and with your trailer being so new maybe you haven't gotten to that point of going that way, but many, many others have.
2. While you haven't faced any maintenance issues you have a 2014 basically BRAND NEW TRAILER. Come back in 5 or 10 years and will talk about how well those nuts and scissor jacks and even the stab bars have held up after the exposure to the type of environment I previously described and that was my point.
3. I don't see how you can get any sort of crank on those two rear most stab bars with that bolt head facing the ground like a foot away. It seems one is going to have to lay down physically and get under the trailer with a wrench or something to tighen and loosen those two bolts. If you do it another way then that would be a good hint to share with others since even the JT strong arms with the hand screws still has from my view that access issue.
4. Lastly I have never said or meant to imply that the stab bars don't help only that IMO for the previous reasons I have stated are working on the less important sources of the stability problem and are what I call bandaids in that they are basically fixing an issue that again IMO can be avoided for the most part to begin with and that is what type of jacks are being used and where they are generally located.
O.K I think I'm bascially thru here since I don't want to get this too far off topic, but I have my opinion and see many issues with the scissor jack and the stab bar system which I feel are not there with what I have recommended and both are not more of a hassle to use than the other when all things are considered which is often the stated reason why one doesn't like what I am advocating to try. I also contend that my system is CHEAPER, REQUIRES LESS MAINTENANCE, SIMPLIER, and JUST AS OR MORE EFFECTIVE. These forums are IMO for discussing and providing information so the reader can make informed decisions and that is all I'm trying to do.
Larry
