Busted landing gear gearbox

[Kenleys Oompah]

Wow, I hate to post a whining feel-sorry-for-me post. Well, actually not that bad.

While extending the landing gear to mount my Mountaineer, I heard a high-pitched grinding noise, (probably left it running longer than I needed to) and the gear ceased to extend. Crap. Got the emergency crank (first time ever) and started turning. You know, if you're by yourself, it's a trick to determine which way to crank if you've never done it before. Then I noticed the shaft to which the crank was attached was moving as I tried to crank.

Took a closer look and found plastic lugs which held the motor/gearbox to a vertical mounting shaft had broken (more crap) so the entire motor was torquing as I tried to extend the gear.

There I was! Alone and the last one to leave this area in the CG, and not able to raise the front of my camper to mount onto the tow vehicle! Do I crouch under the pin box and push up really hard? Nah. Thankfully I had several pieces of 2x10 which I was able to arrange in such a fashion that they kept the gearbox from turning while I continued to extend the landing gear. Juuuuust enough to mount the trailer to the hitch.

We can skip the long discussion of whether or not I plan to fix this myself (way too much crap). It's at the shop getting repaired. Sadly, the tow vehicle is with it. Oh well, I had other stuff that needed to be worked on.

Has anyone else had this happen?

[Phil P]

Hi

That is why I carry 2 6 ton bottle jacks and 6 4X4X24 inch blocks of wood in the TV.

Both of my front legs failed on the first long trip we made and I had to go get them to hook and unhook for the rest of the trip. One of the legs even fell down on the road at 60 Mph.

Phil P

[WaltBennett]

Had one leg completely fail on the old single motor setup a couple of years back. Managed to get home, but had to jack up that side & then both to get unhooked and level the trailer. That managed to screw up the working one as well, so I just replaced the whole single motor setup with a new Bulldog two motor set. Wasn't that hard to do (although I had 2nd, 3rd and 4th thoughts when making a hole in the lower front for the switch assembly!). I posted a thread here about the costs in 2014: http://www.montanaowners.com/forums/...hTerms=bulldog It only took about ten hours to do the work and a lot of that was spent removing the old and finding the right place to make a hole.

The new system vastly much better, although I had one motor seize up, but Cequent replaced it immediately. I don't worry about over taxing the motors when lifting the front, and can level side to side a bit. It also surprised me how easy it is to remove the legs - not a whole lot holding them on!

[richfaa]

Yes it has happened many time.You can get a kit for repair.

[maxjr758]

hade this happen today after driving through horrendous traffic from Coral gables to Homestead. curb side would lower or raise, made a popping noise. I suspect the gears striped ? any advise on fixing it . were at USCG Marathon KEY

[1retired06]

Happened to us as well. Venture had the replacement parts. I carry two large bottle jacks for flats and situations such as you experienced. Manual crank moves easily if you jack the weight off the legs before cranking.