[David and Jo-Anna]

Had a problem this evening when I tried to hitch up our rig. While we were extending the landing legs up to the height necessary to back the kingpin into the hitch, the landing gear motor was struggling hard to raise the rig up the last two inches it needed to go. At that point, it blew the 30 amp fuse. After replacing the fuse, I was able to get the rig up high enough by running the motor in short spurts of power. After backing the truck up so the pin went into the hitch, we tried to lower the landing gear, but the gear wouldn't lower. Instead, we got some clicking noise. The square rod that goes to the curb side landing leg didn't move at all.

At that point, I figured I must have stripped the gear by trying to extend the legs too far. I got out the manual crank and slowly retracted the legs, although there initially was considerable resistance before the legs would begin to retract. After the legs were partially retracted, I tried the motor again, and it seemed to work fine, both for retracting and for extending the legs under load.

My question--have I stripped the gear, and am I now experiencing just a temporary recovery before I get a total failure, or is it possible that I merely jammed the gears and they got unjammed when I retracted the legs manually? I stopped running the motor as soon as I heard the clicking sound, so I didn't get any extensive grinding of the gears. Any way for me to check and see what the status of the gears is?

Also, as luck would have it, we just passed the one year anniversary with our rig, so the Montana warranty has expired. Does Lippert have a longer warranty on the landing gear and, if so, would it cover parts and labor for something like this if the gear is stripped?

As always, thanks for your help with this.

David