Supposed to go on a trip tomorrow, so I was doing some diagnostics on why my landing gear was moaning and groaning the last few times I set up camp.
Raised the front up until it started creaking again and set up some cribbing under the frame, lowered the frame down on the blocks and raised the gear all the way up and extended the pads back down to the ground to lift the frame again to crib it up higher. Did this a couple more times until it was up pretty high, but not high enough to slide the inner leg with the pads out. So, raised them all the way up and started lowering the gear until it started groaning again, until all of a sudden the street side leg quit moving and the curb side kept going freely with no noise.
Popped the top caps off to have a look, tried the remote again while observing, horizontal shaft spinning but bevel gears not turning, and then a piece of roll pin fell out of the bevel gear on the horizontal shaft. ...Damn!
Lippert and Venture were already closed, so couldn't get ahold of them to find out what the specs were for the roll pin (they call it a spirol pin?!?! P/N 1020-08 on their drawing)
So I looked at and measured the chunk that fell out and determined that it was a hardened spring roll pin that was for a 7/32"(0.2187") diameter hole, and should be 1.250" long.
Ran down to my local ACE hardware store just before closing time and picked up four of them (for some spares) at $0.52 each. Got the legs at even length, lined up the slot in the gear to the hole in the shaft, drove out the remaining part of the broken pin with a drift punch, tapped in the new pin with a bigger drift punch and set to proper depth, equally spaced from each edge of the gear.
Success! But still have the binding and groaning problem to deal with on another day. I think that either the lead screw threads or the lead nut threads are probably galled up and binding up. Will try to grease them up, but don't hold out much hope that this will cure the problem. But now, I am way behind schedule on all of the other stuff that I was supposed to be getting ready for the trip.
Probably will need to replace the lead screw and lead nut. Does anyone know if Venture sells just these parts instead of having to buy an entire leg assembly?
But anyway, if you need to only replace the roll pin, it is a hardened roll pin (also called a split pin, C-pin, or spring pin) 7/32" dia. x 1.250 long, available at most any well stocked hardware store. You don't need to wait to get one in the mail from Lippert or Venture if you are in a tight spot and need one right away.
Threaded Mode
