Pop Up Let Us Down

Rita · 05-24-2015, 12:46 PM

Even though I'm the new owner of a 2015 Jayco Jay Series 1207UD I spent the first night of my 4 day camping birthday weekend for the big 5-0 in a hotel about 10 miles from the golf and rv resort where my new trailer spent the evening without me.
When we arrived at the campground at 9pm, approx 3 hours from home the roof to the camping trailer, pop-up, fold down, softside, tent trailer, whatever you want to call it wouldn't rise to the occasion. The lift mechanism would not function nor was there anyway to manually raise it.
We contacted the road side assistance and they were not able to help us beyond the telephone trouble shooting that they provided us. Even they couldn't offer solution on how to raise the roof. We could not reach Jayco, and we have been unable to get assistance and feel stranded.
What do I do now, 3 hours from home and only 6 hours into my 4 day vacation for my 50th birthday?
Hopefully someone can help me with this...
Unfortunately it appears the coupling between the motor/manual lift and the screw rod has failed. The motor spins freely and the rod doesn't turn. Is it correct to say the manual lift connection is on the back of the motor? But please share any ideas or suggestions. They will be greatly appreciated.

emjayuu · 05-24-2015, 04:26 PM

I truly hope that your RV dealer did a compete walk through with you prior to you leaving the lot. Did it work ok then?

scottraycraft · 05-26-2015, 05:49 AM

Did you get this fixed on site, or was the trip ruined.
We had a Viking pop up, with automatic lift system, for 10 years. This automatic lift had NO MANUAL over ride so I worried about it every single trip. The mechanical system never failed, but a dead battery left us in a pinch a few times (water pump switch could get accidentally turned on and it drained the battery) but I carried a jump box and was able to pop it up...it never ruined a trip.

Trev · 07-03-2015, 10:46 PM

I just encountered the same issue on my second trip with the new trailer, having to spend the first of 5 nights in the sleeping in the back of my vehicle before solving the problem in the morning.
I'm sure you have it fixed by now, but there's small smooth pin about 1/4 inch in diameter and about an inch long that locks the lift motor to that screw rod. It had simply fallen out, probably shaken loose during the drive, and was sitting on the floor behind the motor. I was able to line up the hole it fits in to lock the connection from the motor to the long screw rod (if that's what its called), hammer it back in, then wrap some electrical tape around it in hopes of preventing it from falling out again.
This seems like an obvious design flaw for Jayco not to have this pin secured properly in the first place... I'll be discussing this with the dealer tomorrow.

oldmanAZ · 07-03-2015, 10:54 PM

Trev,

Welcome to the forum and thank you for passing along that information.

Garreck27 · 07-22-2015, 12:58 PM

This happened to me our first time out: August 2014. I drove from Wisconsin to the Smokey Mountains with 3 kids and a dog... 12 glorious hours. Got to the site and the motor whirred like crazy but it wouldn't go up. After about 2 hours of calling the dealer and working through the issue I found out that it was the pin that connects the drive shaft to the motor; it had slipped out during the drive and was on the floor of the engine compartment. Horrible design feature. I fixed it with duct tape at the time and the dealer put in a better pin when we got back. Unfortunately, now, our motor will not DROP the roof. Found this out last weekend when all I had was a ratchet to crank the sucker down with. FYI the motor is geared to crank 80 times to drop or raise the roof 1 inch... it took almost 2 hours for me to lower it. Something is wrong with the electrical. I called Jayco today to see if I can have the camper retrofitted with a manual crank. Like the camper, but the electric option (while convenient in theory) is only 1 more thing that can go wrong... and has for us.

DocBrown · 07-22-2015, 03:02 PM

The OP never came back. I wonder what happened with the dealer?

Trev · 07-25-2015, 10:30 AM

Follow up to my earlier post... regarding the pin that locks the roof lift motor to threaded drive shaft on the Lippert Components roof lift system that came with our 2015 trailer (Pop-Up Roof Lift) ; the dealership tech replaced the original pin (vulnerable to falling out) with one that will not fall out.
I'd recommend anyone with this system either get that pin replaced, or at least wrap some electrical tape around the coupler between the motor and drive shaft to help keep that pin in place and avoid the frustration that a few of us have experienced already.

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