Salineriverman

[Salineriverman]

New to forum! Just wanted to reach out. I retired from a lumbermill Jan. 2020 after 42 years. Been blessed with a great job and wife. Live on a farm and raise a few cows. We upgraded our Cougar 5th Wheel in Aug 2020 for a Montana HC 305 RL. I pull it with a 2020 Ram 3500 SRW diesel. Only had a few issues. Current issue is bent rear Jack. When I picked up RV I brought up how lowJack's are mounted to dealer. No response from them. They occasionally drag and on a trip to Smokies I bent rear one in about 30 degrees. Anyone straighten One of these before? I see I can raise them about 2 Bolt holes before they bump out on insulation. Still not gonna be as high as needed but better.

Thanks for any info

[RMcNeal]

I have a Montana with 6 point hydraulic leveling and I raised my 4 rear jacks 2 bolt holes. No problems since then. Still levels correctly without any adjustments. I added the RV Snap Pads before I raised them and raked one pad off on the rear when leaving a campsite. Thankfully, the camp host found it and called me. I got it back on and raised my jacks after that.

[Salineriverman]

Thanks, I plan on raising mine as much as possible, looks like a couple of bolt holes. Gotta Straighten the bent one out some! My auto leveling system keeps showing error on that Jack. This definitely is a design flaw by Keystone!
The rear jacks are too low! Keystone should offer a remedy for this issue.

[DutchmenSport]

More than likely, your's are electric and not hydraulic since you have a High Country and not "Montana Montana" as my dealer refers to them differently.

I don't know about straightening a bent jack, if can successfully do that or not and it will work properly. With the right equipment it's possible. My philosophy is, if it's broke, I can't break it any worse, so why not go ahead and try to fix it myself. If I can fix it, I've saved a penny. If I can't fix it, well ... it was broken to start with. So nothing ventured, nothing gained. You can try to straighten, but be prepared to just purchase a new one.

Yes, you can raise the jacks. I had the same problem with my Montana High Country and I raised my rear jacks as high as they would go. The passenger side had more clearance and actually raised one bolt hole higher than the drivers side. And I raised them both as absolutely as high as they would go. Since then, I've not drug the rear jacks at all.

Yes, this is a shoddy design for the jacks, and it seems it's on all our Montana's, (High Country and Montana-Montana). I would think it would be a simple change to allow more space for the jacks to raise. Maybe some day they will, but for our current campers, we just have to live with it.

FYI, I lost one of my jack pads on the second trip we made with ours. Every since then, I take the extra effort and remove the pads completely when traveling. Even with that, the rear jacks still hung too low originally, and the jack shaft drug, skidding up the round edge. In order to get the jack pad back on, I had to grind off and smooth out the burred brim that formed. That's when I decided enough was enough. Like you, I asked on these forums first if there would be any repercussions raising them, and the response was an overwhelming, "No." "Nothing".

I always use blocks under my jacks, unless I'm on a really unlevel pad unless one end is nearly touching the ground. I also learned a long time ago that my rear jacks will stroke out if extended too far. Basically, from the original position, if they extended farther than the distance of the bottom of the tire, they would stroke out. Maybe that's why they are set so low?

So, now, the only difference I do, is I stack a little higher set of blocks under the rear jacks so they don't extend all the way out and stroke out on me.

[mlh]

We live on a farm and have a few cows and a donkey on our little farm. My first paying job when I was 15 was logging with two horses. One of these horses you could hook him up and say ‘ok Bill’ and he would take the log to the log pile and stop for you to unhook him. Then he would head back to the mountain for another.
Oh welcome to MOC.
Lynwood

[DQDick]

Welcome to the forum! Hope you find us of value.

[Salineriverman]

Thanks for the welcome and info. I had my neighbor come up today and we used washers and got my rear jack back straight. We also raised them up , one bolt hole on one side and 2 on the other. We had to reset the strokes but got it all back. Hopefully Montana will get the message and redesign the jacks in the future. Happy travels!!

[Montana Man]

Another thing to consider is how level the trailer sits. Newer Rams are tall in the rear which can make the rear of the trailer low.

[Spike]

I don’t have an answer, but feel your frustration. My Montana 3790RD landing gear is very low. We just drove 2200 miles to Round Rock Texas to visit my Son. He was excited for us to stay in his driveway and we installed a 50 AMP plug and bought a 50 Amp long cord so we could run our A/C while visiting. When we arrived we found we could not get in his driveway because the landing gear was hitting, even after stacking wood to try to raise it. This will continue to be an issue. Good Luck!

[whiterose]

Be careful when raising the jacks, the hydraulic lines are sometimes routed through the frame and susceptible to the steel rubbing a hole in the plastic. I raised my rear jacks one bolt hole, had I have gone higher I would have caused a problem with the line.
Also, the fasteners are very tight, it can be difficult to remove the nut since it has serrations on the contact surface. Much easier to work on removing the bolt.