How much travel on front landing legs?

[deanrd]

Hi All,

I've had my 08 Monty 3585SA since new, but am just getting around to start towing it. It's been parked on a seasonal site. I've been going thru the normal growing pains. Buying chocks, Teflon hitch plate, extra fuses, etc. Fuses because we blew one moving it, retracted to far ( I blame my helper I moved it the other day with an experienced friends help, but moved it 2 days later by myself. I learned a few things already, height of hitch vs kingpin. My Reese head tilts a lot so I was too low for kingpin. Common sense let me raise 5th wheel to take pressure off hitch. What I don't know (about this alot about everything else) is how far do you normally extend legs before dropping feet and how far can these legs actually extend, not counting dropping the feet. I also have 8 inches between overhang and top of tonneau cover rails. The trailer seems level, but playing around it seemed like I had to drop it from the loaded position quite a bit. Although I am on 3" of 2 x 10s. I guess the only way to know for sure is to get on a level surface and check it.

Thanx - Dean

[RichR]

It's a guess, I usually go about half-way down then drop the legs. Just be sure you have room to play!!

[dieselguy]

To eliminate future issue with retraction of your landing gear ... carefully find out where fully retracted is and draw a line on the inner tube about an inch down from the outer tube with a magic marker. That way you'll not bury the legs and break a gear or something while moving your jacks.

[Carl n Susan]

More than likely you have the Venture Manufacturing landing legs on your 2008 Montana. Venture has a lot of documentation about their gear on their web site. If you can't find it, let me know as I kept copies of everything they had. I have attached their owners manual. It is not very long but it has the answer to your questions. The drop leg is 16" and the outer leg has a stoke of 20".

A couple of points to remember. Never ever extend or retract the driven legs more than about 18" to 19". The best thing that can happen is you blow the fuse. The worst is things like breaking the drive pin (aka shear pin - you really should have a spare), striping a bevel gear, or my favorite, tightening the jack screw so tight you have to disassemble the leg to free it up (hint: the 2" receiver hitch is a perfect fit for the nut when you try to break it loose). Make a mark 1" above the bottom edge of the driven legs and about 18" above that. Those will be your upper and lower limits. Stop when you get to either of those points and you shouldn't ever blow a fuse (or worse).

The second tip is try not extend the inner leg (non-driven) any more than necessary. The more it is extended, the less stability. Half way is a good start.

I also added the landing gear rebuild instructions so you can see how the internals work.

[Phil P]

Hi

Dieselguy has some good advice there.

I had tremendous problems with our landing gear when we first got the trailer. We went thru 3 sets of them before I learned all I need to know about them.

Here is what I have done to prevent further failures.

I removed the landing gear and put them on a work bench.

Then rand them down by hand until the stopped moving don’t force them that damages the long screw thread rod inside the leg where you can’t see it.

Mark the inner tube 1 inch below the outer tube.

The run them by hand all the way up until the stop again don’t force them.

Then run them down 1 inch and mark the inner tube.

Install the landing gear back on the trailer and never exceed the marks and you will not have problems with them.

In our case we carry a model train in the basement and run the landing gear to raise the front of the trailer level with the bed of the truck in order to move the train from the basement to the truck.

For this reason I installed a second drive motor on the curb side landing gear leg.

This was a great idea is removes the tube between the 2 legs and give you more usable room in the front compartment. We don’t have a generator.

However I had purchased the second motor from the landing gear manufacturer and when installed the curb side leg ran much slower than the driver side leg. It turns out that Keystone supplies their own drive motor and it runs faster than the motor recommended by the leg manufacturer.

I purchase second motor from the leg manufacturer and now they run the same and I haven’t had any problem with the landing gear sense.

Phil P

http://www.sallyscoffees.com/conners/conners.html

http://www.sallyscoffees.com/10-whee...0-wheeler.html

[Dave W]

All good information above.

The only comment I have is that you haven't 'lived' until you need to rehitch to your truck and start over, a normal newbie 5er lesson learned and always good for CG spectators with nothing else to do at the moment

[twindman]

Another way to damage the landing gear - park on a slope. Stayed at brother-in-law's place in driveway one time. It sloped pretty good but I was able to get the trailer level. However, when I hitched up it seemed the trailer had rolled down the hill a bit because the chocks didn't hold it tight. After that, my gear started not going all the way up and down. Finally wouldn't move.

[S&VALLAN]

be careful when using a friction disk on you king pin. When hooking up the first time with the disk installed lift the front jacks just enough to move forward to insure that the hitch is locked. some disks a thick enough to not allow the hitch to lock. Haven't done it to mine but have seen the results.