Visit our Popular Forums

**jcanavera** · 06-02-2017, 12:55 PM

Well I was packed and in the process of hitching up when the power jack failed. It's cutting power prior to post going up as high as it should in the retraction mode. Opened up the top and I don't see why it's cutting off early. No emergency crank position so for all intents I'm screwed. My neighbor came over and we were able to use a floor jack for support and got the jack loose enough to get the the three bolts off. With that we were able to unhitch the van, but for all intents I'm screwed. I'll have to unwire the jack and take it to the dealer for repair or replacement. Sorry to all but stuff happens and I guess at 14 years some stuff begins to break. Hope you have fun an sorry to pull out like this last minute. I'd rather it break in the driveway than up there in the campground.

Jack

maccamper · 06-02-2017, 01:06 PM

So so sorry Jack and Patty. You are absolutely correct in dealing with the problem at home rather than in the campground or on the road.

maccamper

**jcanavera** · 06-02-2017, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maccamper

So so sorry Jack and Patty. You are absolutely correct in dealing with the problem at home rather than in the campground or on the road.

maccamper

If the hitch jack wouldn't lower, we could have dealt with that and come anyway. But when you can't retract the jack, it's an entirely different matter. I had to get unhitched as fast as I could since my van when hitched blocks the street in front of my house. I really couldn't play around too long with it. Thankfully I live in a quiet cup-de-sac so no one came through while we had things blocked. Glad it wasn't trash day! Sorry again for having to cancel. We really were looking forward to being there. Nothing worse that being completely set to go and then having to pull out when the last thing you have to do to leave fails.

I'm going to have a lot of hot dogs and buns to eat.

Jack

maccamper · 06-02-2017, 03:46 PM

hot dog fest is still on at 6 pm

we'll miss you jack and patty!

nancy mac

**jcanavera** · 06-02-2017, 08:46 PM

Glad things are still going on. I talked to Mary at the campground office to cancel my reservation. She said the weekend is going to be a good one..Can't believe we've been waiting for this so long to have things fall apart at the last moment like this.

I called the dealer and he said it sounded like the jack is out of sync and is shutting down too early. Suggested that we resyncronize the jack. I just figured out how to do that and will try it tomorrow.

What bothers me is that if the jack gets out of sync, I would think that the gears on the head or slipping due to wear. I'm not sure but we will try that tomorrow, but even if that works, I need to understand how a jack gets out of sync, when the head has never been off. Without understanding this I'm extremely reluctant to travel even if the sync fixes the problem. Who knows I might be jack shopping tomorrow or next week.

Jack

Tikihut · 06-04-2017, 11:48 AM

Just got home safe and sound. Thank you all for another great rally

maccamper · 06-04-2017, 03:49 PM

Saturday night potluck, everyone say hi to Jack and Patty! Now back to some great food! Lots of visiting during the trailer tours. Movie night was the animated movie, "Home."

Great team work pulled off a successful rally -- once we got over the initial shock that Jack and Patty wouldn't be there with the hot dogs on Friday night! It took several of us to carry off what Patty and Jack do. We just asked "What would Jack do?" and carried on.

We had nine trailers as well as Silverflash (Pam and Jerry) joining us each day. Thank you Pam for the cookies and orange refreshment! The weather was perfect and air conditioners felt good in the afternoon. The even numbered sites suffered a power outage for a couple of hours with breaker issues. Not a lot of time needed around campfires though we did have a couple of nice smaller scale campfires.

Here's to a most pleasant 15th anniversary celebration and looking forward to the 16th Annual Moraine View Rally in June 2018. Thank you Jack and Patty for keeping the tradition going! We sure hope that power jack behaves next year when you're ready to pull out of your drive!

maccamper

85MH325 · 06-04-2017, 05:11 PM

We made it home ok... all is well. Thanks to EVERYONE for another fun and entertaining time. It was great to meet some new folks and wonderful to see all of our old friends.

Tikihut had the quote of the rally... as I was coming back into camp, Chris walked over to the open window of my Jeep and very calmly said "Jack and Patty aren't going to make it. Jack's jack is jacked."

I nearly fell out of the Jeep laughing. As a matter of fact there was a LOT of laughing in the group all weekend long!

To Jack and Patty: Sorry you didn't make it... but we'll see you next year!

Thanks again everyone!

**jcanavera** · 06-04-2017, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 85MH325

We made it home ok... all is well. Thanks to EVERYONE for another fun and entertaining time. It was great to meet some new folks and wonderful to see all of our old friends.

Tikihut had the quote of the rally... as I was coming back into camp, Chris walked over to the open window of my Jeep and very calmly said "Jack and Patty aren't going to make it. Jack's jack is jacked."

I nearly fell out of the Jeep laughing. As a matter of fact there was a LOT of laughing in the group all weekend long!

To Jack and Patty: Sorry you didn't make it... but we'll see you next year!

Thanks again everyone!

I just loved the quote from Chris. So appropriate! Yep we plan again for next year. All in all we will figure out what went wrong in the next few days.

I planned on doing a sync with the jack today, only to find out that it now has no power. Looks like in loosening the jack from the A frame to get the trailer off the ball, I now have an open ground from the frame to the jack. I'll run a temporary ground wire and see if I can get the motor to run. If so, then we will see if the sync process gets me operational.

Jack

Lily&Me · 06-04-2017, 07:01 PM

If you get things up and running, Jack, don't hesitate to join us next weekend....there will be room, and you don't even have to bring hotdogs.

Maggie

**jcanavera** · 06-04-2017, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lily&Me

If you get things up and running, Jack, don't hesitate to join us next weekend....there will be room, and you don't even have to bring hotdogs.

Maggie

You know that did cross my mind Maggie but I had a conflict with Patty's monthly home dialysis fluid delivery which was the reason why I had to switch the rally weekend. We won't know the time of delivery until the evening prior so I don't want to be pulling out of the metro area during evening rush hour or later. Thanks for thinking of me!

Jack

Airtandem · 06-04-2017, 07:37 PM

Jack, another idea; there is also have the FALL version how about it? The date has NOT been set and you could set it. The weather might be better for Patti.
Mike

**jcanavera** · 06-04-2017, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Airtandem

Jack, another idea; there is also have the FALL version how about it? The date has NOT been set and you could set it. The weather might be better for Patti.
Mike

At this point we plan one fall outing right now at a full hookup corp of engineers campground at Lake Carlyle in Illinois, about 60 miles east of us. We do almost a week there and that pretty much wraps the year for us. We've cut back a lot since Patty went on dialysis. If anything changes and she wants to do a second fall outing, I'll definitely consider a fall trip up to Moraine. Thanks for the kind offer to pick a date. It was certainly nice of you to think of us!

Jack

travellvr · 06-06-2017, 01:43 PM

Ed and I have now moved on to our next destination (Carbondale IL) and are still commenting on the weekend and the kind hospitality everyone showed to welcome us into your ongoing community. We loved the rally and hope that we will be able to join in next year! We also hope to eventually meet Jack and Patti; it was very evident from the conversations with others how much our "hosts" were were missed. Happy travels until we can meet up again!

**jcanavera** · 06-06-2017, 02:48 PM

Glad to see you all pulled it off. After 15 years of doing this we can all do this in our sleep? Thanks to you all for filling in for us. First time I've ever had vehicle failure deep six me like this.

**jcanavera** · 06-08-2017, 05:17 PM

FYI apparently doing a resync of the jack fixed my problem and the jack is now operating properly. Didn't know I had a crank available so that was good to know. Still can't figure out how things got out of sync, but the bottom line is that it's good to know that the crank is there and short of an absolute failure of the jack post system, I can get the jack up or down if necessary. I'm going to watch it carefully though to see if there is something slipping causing the synchronization problem. Also I think I'll keep some rubber or latex gloves in the trailer. That head has a lot of grease in it.

Jack