Electric tounge jack

[bianchina3]

We took the camper out for the second term last weekend. We had a strange occurance with the front jack.

A little backgroud. I installed a new battery tray to hold two group 27 batteries. Wired them together with a cut off switch on the system. Went to use the jack and nothing happened. I checked all of the electrical and the cutoff was off when we got there (the key was removed) and now it is on. But nothing. I figured that I had something screwed up. Manually craked everything up and figured the batteries had just drained in the month or so we hadn't used it. This would be strange but maybe. Camped over the weekend with it plugged in so the batteries charged. On Sunday went to operate the jack and it still didn't work correctly. It acted as if the batteries were low but did have a partial charge? I put a volt meter on everything and they read full. That is wierd. Any ideas why the strange behavior?

Ed

[garyindaupeh]

I had a similar situation. It turned out to be a bad fuse holder on the positive lead to the battery. The fuse holder has a spring in it which caused an intermittent connection.

[myredracer]

Grounding would be my first suspect. Unless you happen to have a 2-wire jack, grounding is accomplished by the 3 bolts through the mounting plate to the frame. The serrated washers bite into the jack's metal. Remove the bolts and clean all mating surfaces around/at the bolts with emery cloth or sandpaper and re-install and tighten the bolts. Every time the jack is raised and lowered to hook the TT to a TV, there is fore/aft movement in the jack which can loosen the bolts leading to a bad connection.

See if there is an inline fuse or circuit breaker in the positive wire close to the jack. Ours has a breaker mounted to the underside of the head and is easy to miss because it is encapsulated and black. You don't want to cut the encapsulation off the breaker if you can avoid it and would be the last thing I would check. You *might* be able to open up the motor on the jack to expose the wiring connections and verify power is at the motor.

The wiring in the A-frame area is subject to corrosion plus sometimes the wiring is poorly done to start with. You might try checking the connection(s) there.

The jack on our TT failed in about a week from brand new and the dealer had to install a new one. Doesn't have to be a really old jack to fail.

[DutchmenSport]

My electric jack is connected directly to the battery. Did you tap into existing wiring and run a splice to the jack, or run lines directly to to the battery. Since you mentioned your battery cut off, sounds like you ran it through existing wires after the cut-off switch.

You might reconsider attaching directly to the battery. It's possible wires you spliced off of are not heavy enough to power the jack, thus causing a bad performance of the jack. Attach directly to the battery, see if that help. Put a separate fuse in line for the jack and a separate cut off of you want.

[downtheroad]

Are you positive you hooked up your jack when you redid your batteries?

Tongue jacks have a separate dedicated line that needs to go to a positive post. The ground is established through one of the 3 mountain bolts for the jack itself.

[fla-gypsy]

I agree, sounds like a poor connection

[_1nobby]

bianchina3 wrote:
We took the camper out for the second term last weekend. We had a strange occurance with the front jack.

A little backgroud. I installed a new battery tray to hold two group 27 batteries. Wired them together with a cut off switch on the system. Went to use the jack and nothing happened. I checked all of the electrical and the cutoff was off when we got there (the key was removed) and now it is on. But nothing. I figured that I had something screwed up. Manually craked everything up and figured the batteries had just drained in the month or so we hadn't used it. This would be strange but maybe. Camped over the weekend with it plugged in so the batteries charged. On Sunday went to operate the jack and it still didn't work correctly. It acted as if the batteries were low but did have a partial charge? I put a volt meter on everything and they read full. That is wierd. Any ideas why the strange behavior?

Ed

Troubleshooting Step 1:


GROUNDS.

Check all your ground connections.