Jack Failure Disaster
I had a terrible experience yesterday when I tried to unload my camper which resulted in my camper falling over on its side in my front yard. It happened so fast I'm not exactly sure where it went wro...
Forum Discussion
Glad you were able to step back and not get hurt. Glad to hear a classic survived the fall and will be camping again.
Couple things I noted as I was reading through the post. I too have manual jacks which I use a drill with. I never go 2" per rotation, but rely on the drill to tell me when the jack is taking to much road. Then I will go to the next one and work around always making sure the front is higher than the rear. I will usually only work the two front and one rear jack but catch up the other rear every 3rd rotation or so. But I don't really think your jacking method was the root cause, just what brought the other issue to fail.
When you installed the front jacks, did you put a re-enforcement plate on the inside or just rely on the wood? The front jacks sees about 2/3 of the camper weight and that isn't shared equally when you are raising the camper. Just a few screws into wood generally isn't enough strength to hold the leverage and weight when applied lifting. This is why there is always a metal re-enforcement plate on the inside of the walls of the camper which the front jack screws penetrate so the wood is squeezed between the jack and plate.
We had a '69 Franklin with the 3 jack setup and I can still remember how nervous it made me loading and unloading. Never felt as stable as my Lance does even when only 3 jacks are on the ground. Think it had to do with the single center jack being at COG carrying 1/2 the weight of the camper.
Good luck with the repairs and enjoy some camping when you get it done.
Couple things I noted as I was reading through the post. I too have manual jacks which I use a drill with. I never go 2" per rotation, but rely on the drill to tell me when the jack is taking to much road. Then I will go to the next one and work around always making sure the front is higher than the rear. I will usually only work the two front and one rear jack but catch up the other rear every 3rd rotation or so. But I don't really think your jacking method was the root cause, just what brought the other issue to fail.
When you installed the front jacks, did you put a re-enforcement plate on the inside or just rely on the wood? The front jacks sees about 2/3 of the camper weight and that isn't shared equally when you are raising the camper. Just a few screws into wood generally isn't enough strength to hold the leverage and weight when applied lifting. This is why there is always a metal re-enforcement plate on the inside of the walls of the camper which the front jack screws penetrate so the wood is squeezed between the jack and plate.
We had a '69 Franklin with the 3 jack setup and I can still remember how nervous it made me loading and unloading. Never felt as stable as my Lance does even when only 3 jacks are on the ground. Think it had to do with the single center jack being at COG carrying 1/2 the weight of the camper.
Good luck with the repairs and enjoy some camping when you get it done.
