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WilliMinn's avatar
WilliMinn
Explorer
Oct 19, 2017

Quadra BigFoot fire danger

I'm posting this message as a way to warn owners of the potential for a fire in the Quadra BigFoot leveling system.
Our 2018 Class A has this system installed. The 4th or 5th time we used it I noticed smoke coming from the front passenger wheel-well immediately after the unit stopped leveling. Looking under the coach, I saw flames coming from the area near the leveling solenoids and pump.
I quickly evacuated the coach (my wife and 2 guests), grabbed the fire extinguisher and doused the fire.
I notified the company and they said "overheating" was a known issue and that a service bulletin had just been mailed out (and that I'd probably see it in my mail when I returned home). I informed them that they now had "extreme" overheating (in the form of a fire). To their credit, when they couldn't find anyone to service the unit (jacks would not retract, of course) in NW MN, they sent a team out from MI to repair it. Incredibly inconvenient as we were 220 miles from home and needed to get back to work.
I've insisted that they make sure they CALL all BigFoot owners to notify them of this danger. They have been unresponsive since that request, thus this post.
The issue is undersized wiring that overheats in a low-voltage battery condition (due to increased current).
  • Is this an issue only with relatively recent installations? I've never heard of it before, and with thousands of Bigfoot jacks in use for many years, it seems that it would have cropped up before this.
  • I sent an email to the company this morning. They responded within a couple of hours.

    This is what they said.

    "If you or any other customer has not been personally contacted by Quadra Manufacturing, your unit was not on our service bulletin list, therefore your system has nothing to do with the mentioned incident. We had a discrepancy involving our vendor's specifications, component application and low power supply. The customer's units that were equipped with the certain issue have all been taken care of or contacted by Quadra Manufacturing (contact information given to us by Nexus RV). Please spread the word on your forum.

    Thank you,

    Bob Slack
    Sales Engineer
    Bigfoot Leveling Systems
    Quadra Manufacturing
    (269) 221-3094
    800-752-9815 x3094"
  • I asked a follow up question regarding those that bought their coaches used. They followed up immediately with this reply.

    "all the units are 2017 models and the customers were contacted if they were sold and we fixed all in house units before they were sold.

    Bob Slack
    Sales Engineer
    Bigfoot Leveling Systems
    Quadra Manufacturing
    (269) 221-3094
    800-752-9815 x3094"
  • Thanks for the update. For some reason they aren't responding to my emails.
  • Thanks for the updates! There's a lot of peace of mind in those two posts... ;)

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