Front electric jack motor

[Reelay]

I have an electric motor that extends my front stabilizers, there is a hand crank to over ride if motor fails. Is there any preventive maintance to do to keep them in good working condition as they are now.

[handsome51]

Inside the front storage where the jacks are mounted on to top of each end is a plastic cap where the gears are. Make sure they are full of grease( wheel bearing grease is fine). Plus I drilled a small hole in the side of the square tubing the acme thread shaft is housed. Just big enough to get my squirt oil can in. I raised the front up till the inner square tubing is out of the way and the acme shaft is visible. Then I take synthetic gear oil and put the can against the shaft and put about 20 squirts one each shaft. After a while it will leak down and on the inner square tubing outside. I wipe the excess off. That is the only way I have found to lube the shaft. Since I cannot get the trailer high enough to work from the bottom up outside.

[BillB3857]

If you have one motor and a cross shaft from one leg to the other, remove the bolts holding the cross shaft to each stub and check the condition of both the bolt and the hole in the stub shafts. I've had to replace both stub shafts due to the hole wearing through. 1/2" shaft with 1/4" hole drilled through it doesn't leave much stock. Not fun if it breaks. I now carry a spare stub shaft for each side.

[laknox]

Reelay wrote:
I have an electric motor that extends my front stabilizers, there is a hand crank to over ride if motor fails. Is there any preventive maintance to do to keep them in good working condition as they are now.

The majority of electric jacks are pretty-well sealed, and maintenance is minimal. One of my "roundtuits", is to fully retract and extend the legs (by hand) and mark them. One of the worst things you can do with electric jacks is to hit the stops on either end. There's usually at least 1 shear pin that's designed to break if you hit the stops so you don't tear anything up, and they can break at very inopportune moments. A very few jacks have a way to lube the screw, but not many, though if you do have to tear into one to fix a problem, it's probably not a bad idea to clean out the old grease and replace with fresh.

Another of my "roundtuits" is to buy an extra crank handle and cut it off to be able to chuck it up in a variable speed drill. 🙂 If you do this, set the clutch to the lightest setting you can and still have it turn the shaft.

Lyle

[Ron_Nielson]

While you are home, try to insert your manual jack handle into the unit and see if you can crank it up and down. My hole didn't line up properly with the ears on the motor shaft and I found out i had to move the hole so the handle would engage with the ears. Not a big fix, but you don't want to find out you have this problem out on the road away from home.