Self Level Jacks--Montana

[Jim in Halifax]

A newbee!!

5er is now sitting level on our seasonal lot..How do I raise jacks in middle and back so I can raise/lower front jacks so I can hook up to my hitch? Do not want the front jacks go to the ground!!!!

[phillyg]

Originally Posted by Jim in Halifax

A newbee!!

5er is now sitting level on our seasonal lot..How do I raise jacks in middle and back so I can raise/lower front jacks so I can hook up to my hitch? Do not want the front jacks go to the ground!!!!

Go to the manual feature and raise/lower the jacks with the arrow buttons.

[Skw774]

scroll to retract rear and hit enter. it will only retract the rear and center

[Jim in Halifax]

Originally Posted by Skw774

scroll to retract rear and hit enter. it will only retract the rear and center

Unit is on side of unit...Scroll?????
I am home now...Will have to see it when we get to 5er

[mhs4771]

Are we talking Hydraulic or Electric Jacks?? If electric don't have a clue, but if hydraulic you don't have to raise the rear jacks to hook-up, just raise or lower the front jacks, hook-up then scroll to "Retract All" and hit enter. All jacks will retract and you'll be on your way.

[CADman_KS]

Originally Posted by mhs4771

Are we talking Hydraulic or Electric Jacks?? If electric don't have a clue, but if hydraulic you don't have to raise the rear jacks to hook-up, just raise or lower the front jacks, hook-up then scroll to "Retract All" and hit enter. All jacks will retract and you'll be on your way.

Hummm.... I have never thought about, or done this this way. I always hit auto retract BEFORE hooking up, and then hook the raise the front to hitch height.

The other benefit of this is that you don't have to re-extend the front from all the way retracted to get hooked up.

LOL. I can't believe that I never even thought of doing it this way, or that I've never read any posts about doing it this way...

[DutchmenSport]

Mine are electric, Lippert 6 point. In order to retract the middle and rear jacks, I hit the power on button, then hit the left and right arrow at the same time.

The 4 rear jacks will raise, then the front jacks will re-adjust to the position in height where I unhitched from the truck.

Or, put it in manual mode and retract each jack, or set of jacks separately.

Hydraulic system probably works different.

[Carl n Susan]

Originally Posted by CADman_KS

Hummm.... I have never thought about, or done this this way. I always hit auto retract BEFORE hooking up, and then hook the raise the front to hitch height.

The other benefit of this is that you don't have to re-extend the front from all the way retracted to get hooked up.

LOL. I can't believe that I never even thought of doing it this way, or that I've never read any posts about doing it this way...

There are many, many posts about using the Left and Right arrows concurrently to automatically return to hitch height and then Auto Retract to raise all the jacks ON THE HYDRAULIC SYSTEMS ONLY. The system is very intelligent and can save you time. The only time the Left/Right sequence doesn't work is when the unhitch height was below level. Then you have to manually raise the front. But don't worry about the rear and middle jacks as they will adapt to the change in height. But Auto Retract once hooked up is the bomb!

[CADman_KS]

Originally Posted by Carl n Susan

There are many, many posts about using the Left and Right arrows concurrently to automatically return to hitch height and then Auto Retract to raise all the jacks ON THE HYDRAULIC SYSTEMS ONLY. The system is very intelligent and can save you time. The only time the Left/Right sequence doesn't work is when the unhitch height was below level. Then you have to manually raise the front. But don't worry about the rear and middle jacks as they will adapt to the change in height. But Auto Retract once hooked up is the bomb!

Somehow, I have managed to miss all of these posts. I didn't know that I was doing it wrong, LOL. I'll have to go back reread these posts.

You mentioned hitch height. I have never been able to make that feature work either. I need to go and find those posts and figure out what I'm doing wrong...

Thanks for the heads up!!!

[mhs4771]

If you've done much tweaking of the system after auto level is completed it will reset the system so that the return to hitch height won't work and neither will auto retract.
Not really an issue, just manually raise the front to hook-up, then just manually raise all the jacks and you're off.

[Carl n Susan]

Originally Posted by mhs4771

If you've done much tweaking of the system after auto level is completed it will reset the system so that the return to hitch height won't work and neither will auto retract.

I have never had Auto Retract fail me despite the gyrations I have made to the jacks.

[CADman_KS]

Originally Posted by Carl n Susan

I have never had Auto Retract fail me despite the gyrations I have made to the jacks.

LOL, I've never had auto-retract fail me, but then again, I've never used it correctly either...

[Dave and Beta]

I know there is the feature to return to the height you disconnected at, but I haven’t used it. Just my personal preference and I haven’t read it anywhere but I like to retract the rears first, then raise the front and hook up. My thought is if you are raising the front without retracting the rears you are putting a tremendous amount of load on the rear jacks.

[Carl n Susan]

Originally Posted by Dave and Beta

.... My thought is if you are raising the front without retracting the rears you are putting a tremendous amount of load on the rear jacks.

Fortunately it doesn't work that way. It is an equal pressure system. Raising the front decreases the causes the pressure in the rear to be released to equalize the front. The engineers designed a very smart system that will prevent the end user from hurting it.

[Dave and Beta]

Interesting. Thank you.

[DaveK]

Just a note. When my 5er returns to the height that I unhooked, I still have to manually raise it approximately an inch for the pin to slide into the hitch and lock. I keep a steel measuring tape handy and measure to get an idea of what will be needed when I reconnect.

For example, when I unhook, the front of our 5er is usually 62" off the ground. When I prepare to reconnect, I raise it to 63", then carefully back up the truck to see if it properly aligns.

[beeje]

If you have hydraulic level up you cannot control the center and rear Jacks separately. They work together. For example if you are in manual mode and you push the rear button to raise all four rear Jack's the center and the rear ones will raise the ass end of the unit.
We all know that the large slide Toppers collect water in rain so what I do is raise the front only to get that water off for a few minutes and then lower back down.
When I'm ready to leave I raise it up to the correct level hit auto retract and leave

[CADman_KS]

Originally Posted by CADman_KS

Somehow, I have managed to miss all of these posts. I didn't know that I was doing it wrong, LOL. I'll have to go back reread these posts.

You mentioned hitch height. I have never been able to make that feature work either. I need to go and find those posts and figure out what I'm doing wrong...

Thanks for the heads up!!!

UPDATE: After camping this weekend, I decided to go back and try re-hitch, and auto-retract.

Re-hitch: When we first got the unit, almost 2 years ago now, I tried the re-hitch method several times, and it didn't work. The very first few times that we hooked up, we were on an uneven pad, so I didn't know if I was doing something wrong, or what the deal was. Since the system worked quickly and easily on manual mode, I just did it with manual mode.

This weekend, on a level pad, I tried it again, and viola!, it worked! In this particular case, it only went up less than an 1" from the original unhook height, so it was very close when it was level.

I backed the truck up, and hooked up. Never touched it again! WOOHOO!

Auto-retract: With a successful auto-hitch, it was time to try auto-retract! That was a no-brainer, though, since I had been using that previously, but all that did was retract all the jacks, and leave my nose in a nose down position. Auto-retract works well, and lifts all the jacks in one fell swoop.

Thanks again for the help on this forum!

[Mikelff]

Originally Posted by DutchmenSport

Mine are electric, Lippert 6 point. In order to retract the middle and rear jacks, I hit the power on button, then hit the left and right arrow at the same time.

The 4 rear jacks will raise, then the front jacks will re-adjust to the position in height where I unhitched from the truck.

Or, put it in manual mode and retract each jack, or set of jacks separately.

Hydraulic system probably works different.

Much easier way is to power on, scroll through menu to retract rear, hit enter. Only the rear and middle will retract. Front jacks will stay put.