Zaxis Question? Dual motors

[bwney]

Trying to decide whether to fix my current Venture landing gear, or just replace it all. Gears are shot in one leg, and the other leg is bent and won't go up easily. And- if gears in one leg are gone, can the other be far behind? Maybe I should replace the plastic gearbox, too.

Will my Zaxis handle 2 motors? As anybody running that setup? Not a deal-killer, but would be nice to keep remote. DW has never figured out extend and retract.

Amazon has a decent price on Ultra-Fab landing gear with two motors. May need minor mods, but I can handle that.

[H. John Kohl]

The Zaxis is rated at 30 Amps. If you go with dual motors you will be max draw at least 40 and up to 60 Amps current. The Relays in the Zaxis would fail first. I though about going dual motors but knew I would have to design an elaborate Relay system to handle the 60 Amps current. The reason it is elaborate is the polarity is switched to the motors for up and down requiring diodes and diode switching circuits.
This is my belief.

[Ozz]

John, have you measured the actual amp draw? I replaced my 2 relays, and they were 30 amp relays..D.C.
It is possible they don't max out the relays, but I don't know, haven't amped them.
It would be a good idea to have a built-in time delay for the motors when switched, would save a lot of problems for folks.

[H. John Kohl]

I have a resettable 30 amp fuse/breaker inline with the motor and have tripped it when raising the nose to almost the max.
My house parking pad requires max usage of the legs 22" run.

[Leaseit]

Let me address the first part of your quwstion.

After i had problems i decided to measure the current going to the one venture motor landing gear. Insurge (Start Up) current was 58 amps. Yes i said 58 amps for the initial start surge. The run current would vary between 28 and 31 amps.
Side Note: The Manuel Switch on the control panel is stamped with a Max rating of 20 amps. It feeds the motor directly, not though the remote controller board. I would also check the wire size coming from the switch to make sure is is rated high enough for these currents.
About putting the dual motor landing gear on your unit. DC motors DO NOT run synchronous. In other word one will run faster or slower than the other and unless you install dual switches, one for each motor you could end up out of level and one motor taking more load than the other. As i had talked with the enginner at Venture about some issues, he had warned that one motor could run as much as 5 percent faster than the other. We had a nice enginnering talk about some things.
The additional problem is the current rating carried by the Remote Control board and the possability that maybe some of the relays might not be heavy enough to carry the load and you end up buring a contact. I The lable on my Control board fell off and i was able to see the manufacturer of the relay and its rating. I won't even tell you what i found, but it wasn't good.
To solve my problems i designed an overlay relay board for the landing gear that piggy backs the Remoter Control board to take the load and reduce voltage drop going to the motors. It also takes the load off the manuel switch so that the toal load is handled by the overlay board.
I gave someone at the rally the design drawing, but i can't rememeber if it was John Kohl or who.
If you would like PM me with your E Mail address and i will e mail you the design sheet for the board along with the wire breakout for the switch.

Randy

[mazboy]

on my last 3150 i had problems with the landing gears lifing the trailer. i finally just replaced the front legs with 2 electric motors....worked great but cost about $700-800 with labor.

[bwney]

Thanks for the help. I suspected the controller wouldn't work long without a major mod.

I'm parked till April 1 (or so)-so we have time to make a decision.