electric landing gear upgrade

[grumbolt]

when using the landing gear on my rig, it always seemed sluggish, as well as making the circuit breaker cycle at times.


i looked at how it was wired and it was pretty standard (cheap, but standard lol)


the power went to the up/down switch which was a double pole double throw center off rocker (heavy duty) and then to the motor.


i disconnected the wires close to the motor and wired the motor side into an albright solenoid outputs, and the switch side i wired to the wires that used to go to the switch to the control wires in the solenoid.



the red post i connected to my batt + (using a circuit breaker)
the black post i connected to chassis ground.
for these 2 wires i happened to have some automotive 2 gauge battery wires laying around and i used them, but anything 8 gauge or bigger should be plenty big enough.


this is the link to solenoid i used:
https://www.amazon.com/Unversal-Sole...dDbGljaz10cnVl





my landing gear no longer is sluggish, and i no longer cycle the circuit breaker.

[432bartman]

I know on my hydraulic ones, it started doing the same thing, with the circuit breaker interrupting and then resetting. From this site, I read that it was my factory 50 amp that was the problem, which needed to be replaced with an 80 amp, which Lippert recommends. Crazy if they know this is an issue and they are not coming with the 80 amp as standard equipment. Glad yours is working again Grumbolt

[Carl n Susan]

The 2007 electric jacks did not use a 50 amp breaker. They have an inline 30 amp blade fuse.

Montana finally heard us and are now installing 80 amp circuit breakers for the pump circuitry in the new rigs. It only took 10 years or so.

[grumbolt]

mine had a 30 amp circuit breaker on it when i got it (second hand) i can only assume the previous owner made that change.



in my case, the same circuit breaker still powers the landing gear, but with the larger , shorter wiring it seems the landing gear gets higher voltage, therefore lower amperage is needed and it actually works better.


it does make sense that the circuit breaker looked like an afterthought in its installation!


thanks, grum.

[Dave W]

Ours is so slow that I've considered going to a two motor type as we had on our last and SOB 5er. I'm not sure that rewiring the Lippert LG would make any difference to. it but it/s worth a few hours of my time even though it's the upgrade on my now pretty short list.


Grum - do you have a wiring sketch or was it just seat of the pants and electrics knowledge?

[grumbolt]

sorry for the late reply,

i had a death in the family and havent been on much..



i didnt have a schematic but can tell you exactly how to do it and as a bonus you get to keep your existing switch!


on the relay i posted,
the red dot is battery positive (through a fuse or circuit breaker)
the black dot is ground
the other 2 go to the motor.


when you disconnect the existing wires from the motor, one of them will go to green wire, the other will go to the black wire (both pictured here at top)


if the landing gear goes in the wrong direction, simply reverse the motor leads.




for what it is worth, i was considering a dual motor setup also until i did this upgrade.

[Ram Montana High Country]

Originally Posted by grumbolt

sorry for the late reply,

i had a death in the family and havent been on much..



i didnt have a schematic but can tell you exactly how to do it and as a bonus you get to keep your existing switch!


on the relay i posted,
the red dot is battery positive (through a fuse or circuit breaker)
the black dot is ground
the other 2 go to the motor.


when you disconnect the existing wires from the motor, one of them will go to green wire, the other will go to the black wire (both pictured here at top)


if the landing gear goes in the wrong direction, simply reverse the motor leads.




for what it is worth, i was considering a dual motor setup also until i did this upgrade.

Sorry about the death in the family.

Where is this relay located? What year is your rig?

[Dave W]

Originally Posted by grumbolt

sorry for the late reply,


i didnt have a schematic but can tell you exactly how to do it and as a bonus you get to keep your existing switch!

Sorry to hear about the family situation.


Thanks for the update. Might be a good thing for me to look at and hope it might help our poky landing gear.

[grumbolt]

my montana is a 2007, i am now in the process of turning my existing landing gear into a 2 motor system.



i plan to take pictures and do a better post than this one was.
basically i will be removing the landing gear one at a time, disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling with rebuild kits and proper lubrication


then installing new motors and gearboxes on both legs
currently only one leg has a motor and there is a cross bar to the other leg.
this will eliminate that bar and increase the storage area in the front compartment.


after all that i will replace the single switch that currently controls the landing gear with 3 switches.. one for each leg independently, and one that will control both legs.



the electrical will end up using 2 of the above mentioned albright relays, one for each side.


while i have the legs disassembled, i may look into what it would take to put limit switches for the full up and full down position of the legs to prevent damage to them should someone have a brain fart. who knows if i get really creative i might even figure out a way to make an auto park feature where you just hit the button and it fully retracts them.. ah the adhd mind runs wild lol



i also plan to look into what can be done to make them easier to lubricate the actual screw that does the lifting...

[mlh]

Now that is a nice upgrade.
Lynwood

[grumbolt]

i ordered and received the rebuild kits for the legs.

i had ordered 2 kits for the drivers side leg being that the axle was the only difference between the 2 kits, and i needed the longer axle to attach the motor to.


i cleaned both legs and installed the kits in both legs only to realize that the passenger side leg now had the axle shaft sticking out of the wrong side of the leg, and that once installed, the manual raising and lowering of the leg should the motor go out would be much more difficult being that the crank would have to be inside the center storage area where there isnt much room.



i inspected the axle assemblies and discovered that there is a roll pin that the side bevel gear locks onto, and the other side has a c-clip that is used to secure the bronze bushing.


to reverse the orientation of the axle i drilled a 7/32 hole on the end with the c clip, then used a short roll pin and stainless washer (very thin) on the side where there was originally a c-clip. attached are pics of the hole placement.



when you reinstall the axle on the passenger side, the new hole i drilled was the one with the longer roll pin and gear, and the other end gets the thin washer and short (so as not to interfere with the bevel gears) roll pin.
this will orientate the motor/gearbox properly such that the motor/gearbox is inboard of the legs and points the manual input shaft towards the outside of the rv.


tomorrow when i start mounting things up ill know what if anything needs to be trimmed to make room for the motor / gearbox on the passenger side.


then it will be to get the wiring proper.. (toying with the idea of getting a winch wireless remote that would plug in to the harness)
if i do put a remote on it, it will make it faster to hook up.

[Mark7]

I moved the 2 motor system I have now from my last Excel I had before I sold it. I just exchanged between the Monte and Excel so I could keep the 2 motor system for ease of leveling.

I did a complete re-wire of the landing gear system that gave me independent control of each jack as well as controlling them both together. Also have a local switch to control them, or a wireless remote control setup I can use to adjust the height when hooking up, or if I need to make big changes in height for leveling I will walk around the rig doing other things needed while holding a button on the remote. It works great.

I don't want to hijack this thread but if anyone is interested i could provide a drawing I made and some pictures.