Replaced and upgraded front landing gear!

[kingdaddy]

The landing gear on our 3580 finally failed completely. Fortunately we are "long-timing" it in an RV park not far from where we recently sold our home and were not planning on going anywhere else for a while...
It got to where the motor just could no longer lift the front of the trailer without the clutch clicking away and not actually lifting at all. It took some heavy duty jacks to assist just to get the trailer off the truck. The follower side landing gear would no longer support the weight so the scissor jacks (heavy duty BAL) and a jackstand did temporary duty.
I had a great mobile RV service company diagnose and do the repair and upgrade. They replaced the failed gear under the extended service plan I had purchased when we bought the trailer, and I paid to have them replace BOTH landing gear legs and add a second motor and transmission. So the trailer is now lifted by two motors and transmission working in parallel with no shaft and separate switches for each leg. Wow, what a difference! Great mod, not cheap but well worth it IMO...

[Phil P]

Hi


I added the second transmission and motor about a year ago. I also wire the trailed to use a winch relay to switch the power so both run at the same time. I did put an off / on switch at the curb side landing gear in order to get them back in sync when they needed it.

Now for the surprise!!!

I ordered all of my parts from Venture for this mod. To my surprise the curb side leg moved half as fast as the street side leg. Venture who is very helpful asks me for the part numbers of the street side motor. They informed me that that was NOT one of their motors. I purchase the needed parts for the street side leg and they have been working well ever since.

I have been watching the post referring to the landing gear on this forum.

So I cut one of my failed legs open to see why it wasn’t working. What I found was the long screw that runs from the top to the bottom of the leg inside the square tube where it can’t be lubricated was galled to the nut. This is the part that lifts the weight just like any screw jack.

After looking at Venture’s weight specifications for the legs I see they increase with the type of motive power used.

http://www.venturemfgco.com/uploadfi...e/LG-Specs.pdf

I am sure that the use of a motor transmission assembly that runs the legs at twice the speed is the cause of a lot of the failures I read about here.

Phil P

[Dam Worker]

Having independent motors for each leg is the only way to go. My old Vanguard had two switches one for each leg located together which really helped with leveling up the unit. I am sure you will be very happy with your new system. My new unit has the hydraulic auto level which I like better until something goes wrong with it.

Tom Marty

[Dmcgrew]

Did the same thing to an older sob after two failures of the sheer pin on the connecting shaft. Was a great improvement and would recommend it to everyone to eliminate the problem with under sized landing gear motors and gears.

[dieselguy]

My 2011 3150RL has grease zerks on the black mounting tubes about midway down. I dunno if it actually gets grease to the screw, but I grease them now and then. I also pop off the top cover and pour just a bit of 90wt gear oil on top of the gears from time to time. I do agree on the heavier trailers there ought to be two drive motors standard.

[kingdaddy]

I didn't get a chance to see the actual damaged part that failed since I wasn't at the trailer when the guys came to work on it and I didn't want to keep the old parts just to see...
The motor was really laboring hard to lift the trailer and I attribute it to the marginal sizing and single motor/transmission design and possibly a bad mechanism that was adding to the load on the motor in addition to the actual weight.
I like the additional benefit of independent switches to fine tune the leveling, just gotta be careful to keep them pretty close to avoid putting any "twist" on the trailer frame if parked on uneven ground.
The guys did a good job on it! More than I would have wanted to tackle...

[Phil P]

quote:Originally posted by kingdaddy

I didn't get a chance to see the actual damaged part that failed since I wasn't at the trailer when the guys came to work on it and I didn't want to keep the old parts just to see...
The motor was really laboring hard to lift the trailer and I attribute it to the marginal sizing and single motor/transmission design and possibly a bad mechanism that was adding to the load on the motor in addition to the actual weight.
I like the additional benefit of independent switches to fine tune the leveling, just gotta be careful to keep them pretty close to avoid putting any "twist" on the trailer frame if parked on uneven ground.
The guys did a good job on it! More than I would have wanted to tackle...

Hi

If you look at the specifications from Venture you will see with the dual motors you have 8,000 lbs capacity for the pair of legs and 5,000 lbs for a single motor.

This is based on Ventures motor and gear box. Now when you change the motor speed or gear ratio to speed up the extension and retraction you greatly change this capacity.

As I stated before I and sure the problems a number of us have had with the front legs is related to the use of the incorrect motor / transmission from Keystone. I am on my 4th set of front legs and these don’t make the noise the others did running Keystones motor / gearbox.

Phil P

PS: Until I get my place sold I still function as usual this means I haul my own scrap to the scrap yard.