Jacks Raising Slowly

jsmart wrote:
Have a 2002 Itasca Sunrise 32V with the HWH jacks, noticed on our last long trip the front drivers jack wouldn't come up at all. Manually pushed it up with some effort, deployed it again, sprayed all the cylinders with wd40 and wiped clean. The jacks have not had a problem since. It sounds like (from the responses on this forum) I have a faulty inner seal that will need to be replaced at some point in time, anyone out there "nursed" their jacks along for awhile? We use our MH frequently and after the one issue with the drivers side jack, we haven't had any other issues since.

My jacks are HWH 200 series and are 18 years old. I have "nursed them along" with silicone spray for the last 5 years. Prior to that I would used wd-40 once a year just because someone told me to. When I first started to notice this problem the front drivers side jack would make a creaking noise when retracting. It would take longer to retract and would stick out about 4 inches and just stop. I could not move it by hand or a 2x4. What I noticed is if I fully extend the jack and spray the cylinder with silicone spray it would retract quickly by itself. These are older HWH kick down jacks and may not have the same tolerance seals as the newer ones. I can't find a cross section diagram showing where the upper seal is and don't know if the transmission fluid goes all the way to the lower seal or stops at the upper seal. Maybe Doug can answer this. So what I do now as soon as I hear the jacks starting to creak I will spray all the jacks. I usually do this once a year which I don't consider a lot of maintenance. If they were under warranty I would have HWH replace them as Doug said. For now spraying with silicone spray with jacks fully extended and then letting the silicone dry on the cylinders once a year works for me. Hope this helps someone.