For those of you who have newer Safari's with an electric tongue jack, the day will come (its happend to me twice
) when the electric motor will not operate. It may happen due to battery failure, fuse blowing or some other malady. The question at that point is what to do when you know that you cannot get the motor to operate.
Dependent upon the brand of jack you have, it may be as easy as popping open an access hatch, inserting a manual crank and cranking away.
If you are dealing with the H & H Super Jack, which Airstream uses in their newer trailers, its a different story. With this jack you have to remove the power head. Not a bad process since they give you a little wrench to do this with.
Once you have the head off, you insert your manual crank into the jack and off you go. At this point you probably are happy to get your trailer off or on the hitch ball.....but be forwarned you will need to sync up the head before you place the motor back on top.
The first thing you need to do is manually crank your jack back as far as it will go. This will retract the post. Once the manual crank stops, you then must reverse the crank one revolution from the stop point.
The next step is to operate the jack motor in the retract position until the jack motor stops. Now if your jack is like mine, there is no label showing up or down. Push the switch one way and the jack is extended, the other way is to retract. I used a "sharpie" and marked my switch positions U and D. U is the retract direction and D is down or extend setting, (you may have different thoughts on what's up or down so mark it to conincide with whatever keeps your head straight). Do this labeling because once you have the head off, you may have a heck of a time figuring out what is up or down.
Once the motor has reached the fully retracted position it will shut down. At that point you can place the head back on the jack and retighten the screw which holds it in place.
Again this resync is for the H & H Super Jack. H & H usually places a sticker on the jack tube which warns you of the need to resync if the head is pulled. Remember to read your jack manual since you may have another brand of jack or vintage of H & H jack that doesn't require this procedure.
Be aware that Airstream does not warrant jacks that have been manually used and were not resyncronized properly. It will cause damage to the jack and the dealerships can recognize that damage.
Jack
Linear Mode
