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I became concerned about properly lubricating my front landing gear jacks after I saw a failure of one on a neighbor's 5th wheel while I was overnighting at an RV park. I did a little research and discovered that a front landing gear jack failure more often occurs in the approximately 2 foot long threaded rod that is driven by the spider gears and actually lifts the rig. So, I contacted Lippert Components and asked them what they recommended. Their response was that I should remove the top cap and pour regular motor oil over the top of the spider gears so that it would run down the threaded rod, and the threaded collar that the rod goes through, which is located below the spider gears. They said pour just enough oil in so that I could see it dripping down onto the jack foot pads. Then cover the spider gears with grease and put the cap back on. And then, of course, run the jacks up and down several times. I did what they suggested but went a little further. I bought 3 feet of clear vinyl tubing (think it was an inch and a quarter or an inch and a half inside diameter), plugged one end, removed the landing gear foot pads, filled the tubing up to a little over half full of motor oil (that took just a little experimentation to get the right amount of oil into the tube, but now I will know next time) and inserted the tubing over the threaded rod until I hit the top and had a little oil running down the side of the tubing. At that point, I was absolutely sure that the everything was lubricated! Once you make the tube, which cost about $7 to do, the whole process is really easy and takes about 15 minutes to lube both jacks. I heard someone on a Youtube video say that eventually, your landing gear jacks will fail. I figure that doing this twice a year should go a long way toward avoiding (or at least delaying) a front landing jack failure.
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