Auto level system problems

[bigskydoc]

If I drop the extensions to ground, mine won't level because the system won't be able to lower the nose enough. Then I have to hook back up and shorten the extensions so I can get enough travel in the front power jacks.

I can usually get by without blocks under the back, but on unlevel ground, they are frequently needed. It's easier to just toss them under the rear jacks to begin with so I don't lose the return to hitch point if it turns out they are needed.

Of course the height on my 29.5 BHDS is maxed out to match my F-350 so it may be different for your trailer

[JetTech]

I think the variable here is the starting height of your pin, which would depend on your truck and hitch setup. For many of us, dropping the front extensions down to near ground level before disconnecting our trucks puts the front end of the trailer very high and mostly non-adjustable in the retract direction. With this as a starting point, and with any mild rearward pad slope, AND with a longer trailer, the rear stabilizers really have to extend out to find "level", and in some cases, aren't long enough to actually reach "level", so the system will try to lower the front. Well, if the front was nearly fully retracted because we used too much of the front extensions, it may be bottomed out and can't find level that way either. That's when you get the message "unable to level". It's not that there's anything wrong with the system! It just can't get to level as one or more corners is maxed out in each respective corner!

Two fixes:

Don't start with front leg manual extensions fully out, which allows the system to electrically lower the nose more if needed.

Fix two is to retract all legs and place pads under the rear. This will most likely end up with one or more tires off the ground. As far as that goes, my manual states to not raise the tires off the ground. If that's the goal, i.e. not raising the tires off the ground, the fix is to use fix 1 above, which means pulling your truck back in and hitching up so that you can adjust the front extensions up a few holes.

Obviously this is a fix for rearward sloping pads. If slope is forward leaning, you'd actually want more extension up front.

As for lifting your tires off the ground, any opinions out there? I don't feel the trailer is as stable, and the manual actually cautions against it. Would love to hear some opinions!

[Rustysocket]

Jet tech, described the situation very well. I do drop my front extensions but only to withing about 3 holes of the ground, or the top of my block stack if I am choosing to use them on the front. That puts the front jacks partially into the stroke when lifting the pin to disconnect.

Regarding the lifting of the tires off the ground. When I perused trailers on the dealers lot all of the Jaycos with levelling systems were setup and levelled. His lot is gravel and imperfect, I noted that many of the trailers had one wheel that was not contacting the ground after they had been leveled. My opinion is that Lippert is always going to advise against lifting the wheels off the ground not because the system isn't capable but simply because of the liability should an accident happen and a user had lifted the wheels and removed the tires. That's a sticky situation to be in from a legal standpoint and one that could result in death pretty easily. If I were on the road and needed to change a flat for instance I would have no problem using the levelling system to lift the offending side off the ground to change a tire, but I'd still be very cautious about getting myself under the trailer. Anytime you lift something heavy off the ground like that you should have some redundancy under the axles to prevent it falling, but when we are travelling we don't always have everything we do at home. It's the same with a flat tire in a car, that puny little jack will get the wheel off the ground by lifting at the frame point, but I sure wouldn't trust it enough to get under the car.

With all that rambling said, we have one site that is unlevel and where I like to be in the site puts my driver side rear trailer wheel in a slight pothole. I've been too lazy to take along a shovel to fill it in so the times we have been in that site that wheel was off the ground to the point that it could be turned. Didn't think any more about using it that way as it's just like many of the RV's were setup on the dealers lot.

[Fire_Instructor]

The only times that I had problems with my 3.0 system, is when I started with too high a tow pin height...

[TexasRT]

I want to clarity, I do not recommend doing what I did OR going against what your owners manual recommends. What I did was simply as a test. DO NOT try what I did.....

[tadam]

Returning from our first trip this past week, we got a great piece of advice on leveling. One side was lower than the other, so we were advised to put boards underneath our tires on the low side raising the axles up to being very close to level and it worked great. We were struggling before these nice folks came over to offer their advice. The first time we did the auto level thing, both tires on the low end came off the ground. I will use this method every time if need be along with putting blocks under each leg extension.

[JeremiahM]

Yeah, been using blocks on the TT to level side to side for years now

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[JeremiahM]

Well, adjusted the pin box today (raised) so that the trailer wouldn't ride nose high, went up one hole on each bolt (bout an inch) and is nearly dead on level. Maybe sits half an inch higher in front of the trailer axle than in rear. Anyways, used the auto leveling system again for hitching and disconnecting and re-leveling, worked flawlessly this time, nice to have instructions, plus the re-zero actually level probably helped some too

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[JeremiahM]

Still looks a little nose high, but it's good



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[JeremiahM]

Truck sits more level than appears in picture too

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[FoxFanRay]

Being just an observer without a dog in this fight, I have to say I don't understand one thing. With all the people saying they put boards under their tires to get the RV somewhat level, and boards under the jacks, and then auto-leveling works, what good is that auto-level system? I don't have auto-level on my rig, and I just put boards under my tires to level the rig. I've gotten quite good at looking at the 'bubble level' I have on the pin box, and am able to come pretty close to level on the first try. Help me understand why this is a good system please. Not trying to offend anyone here.

[eldermike]

With the 6 point system you use blocks under tires on low side to get closer to level. It's not critical to get level with blocks and in most cases it's not even necessary to use them at all. But either way the system will do the rest of the work plus all the stabilization with the press of a single button. Another plus is the end result is always the same.

[Rustysocket]

Originally Posted by FoxFanRay

Being just an observer without a dog in this fight, I have to say I don't understand one thing. With all the people saying they put boards under their tires to get the RV somewhat level, and boards under the jacks, and then auto-leveling works, what good is that auto-level system? I don't have auto-level on my rig, and I just put boards under my tires to level the rig. I've gotten quite good at looking at the 'bubble level' I have on the pin box, and am able to come pretty close to level on the first try. Help me understand why this is a good system please. Not trying to offend anyone here.

I understand what your getting at as I had the same questions until I saw it work. Lets say for instance you pull into a concrete pad smooth site on a side hill that is out of level side to side by three inches and front to back by another three inches. In other words the door side rear is 6 inches higher than the driver side front. That is not an easy one to level with blocks and for the perfectionist can take quite a while as each corner has a different requirement. With an auto level system you hit the button and it will level the trailer in about two minutes. I purposely used those numbers because they are within the stroke cababilities of each jack and the system will handle it no problem without any additional block. Now lets say were in the same site but it's gravel and we have the trailer right where we want it but the front driver side jack is in pothole that is four inches deep so now we need ten inches of travel for the system to work but the jack only has seven inches. If we set down 4 inches of block under that jack the system now will work because we have given it back four inches of stroke ( the amount of lentght the jack can lift) .

After you have used the system a few times and get a feel for what it can and what it cant do you can eyeball what you need for blocks. I never have needed to actually pull my trailer wheels up on levelling blocks like I used to .

It saves time in the sense that I can set the guesstimate number of blocs down under each jack. Unhook, pull the truck away, hit autolevel and in about a minute I have a perfectly level trailer with no need to get in and out of the coach to check. No "conversation" with the wife about whether it is level or not or whether it's good enough or not....

In fact the best thing about it is that I can pull in, unhook, grab a beer and go to the pool...... the wife can push the auto level button.

Once I saw the system work, it was a must have on my next trailer and I was pleasantly suprised when I saw that it was an included option on the Eagle fifth wheels we were looking at in 2016. By the time we were able to decide and order Jayco had removed it from the package on the 2017's and made it a chargable option. I had my order in early enough that I got a 2017 off the 2016 build sheet and it was included however I still would have paid for it as it was a non-negotiable must have for me.

Mine is the four point system. I can see on the Northpoint and Pinnacle lines that use the 6 point system and have another set of jacks clear at the back of the coach where there could be some clearance issues getting in and out of driveways and other sloped access where it could be an issue on longer rigs as some have reported here. My rear jacks are immediatly behind my rear axle.

There certainly is nothing wrong with the conventional method. I think some people struggle with it more than others. And of course there are those of us who are married to someone like my wife who insists that the trailer absoultely has to be level ( she keeps her own bubble level in the trailer ) I hope that helps you.

[schiguy]

Well said Rustysocket. I have the 6-point and I have not had the issues other folks have had. I really enjoy having the auto-level and I have to say that I would add it again given the option. My DW is also a big fan and it is nice that she has learned it as well and enjoys leveling the FW now.

[JeremiahM]

If it continues to work properly as it did yesterday, I'm a fan now

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[Jayco Rich]

X2 Rustysocket. I try to start close to level. For the times I get an ERROR message I will retract all the jacks some and then hit the auto level again. That normally works for me.

[Cdash]

Rustysocket explained it well.

The only thing I would add is that it is much easier to place some blocks under the jacks after you get the trailer where you want it, than it is to get them under the wheels and back up on it. I know that way works, but DW had a tenancy to read the level backwards..... Blocks under rear jacks followed by autolevel button has made setup much less stressful for our family.

[Rustysocket]

Originally Posted by Cdash

Rustysocket explained it well.

The only thing I would add is that it is much easier to place some blocks under the jacks after you get the trailer where you want it, than it is to get them under the wheels and back up on it. I know that way works, but DW had a tenancy to read the level backwards..... Blocks under rear jacks followed by autolevel button has made setup much less stressful for our family.

My wife had a tendency to forget how to read the level as well... I can't tell you how many times I had to go over what the bubble on the high side means and why it didn't move..... my daughter learned how to read the level at age 5 and she would come to the truck giggling and tell me what we really needed to do, and we would humor my wife, remove the blocks we were on, move them to the other side and start the process over. The less of that I have to do these days the better.

At that stage in my life I had visions of my me being able to come home from work and the truck would be hooked up and we would be ready to get in and go, so I was in teaching mode. At a certain point my focus changed from teaching my wife to educating my daughter about how things work.

As we have aged and changed trailers several times, there are certain things that I'm just not interested in spending any more time than necessary on.. one is leveling the trailer, the other is setting up tripods and finding sattelite signals. My wifes side of the story would be that she _tolerates_ camping.

Iv'e been through the camping setup/breakdown drills thousands of times over the years and while I appreciate the assistance from my daughter, she will be on her own before too long, and so now I focus on making my life easier... that and I just love technology, especially when it works.

[nhfire152]

For those with the 3.0 system, have any of you attempted the manual setup?

I had a failure last week with my 375 BHFS. I re-attempted, and had another failure. The weird thing is the fact that it was pretty much dead on level. It was failing just prior to the center stabilizers being set down.

So my question is...if you level the unit manually...how do you drop the centers?

[Ultratravler]

I had the same problem 1 time. Unit leveled, but didn't drop the center jacks. Never did figure out why or how to manually drop center jacks. Interested to find out how.

Dave