Bounder with Atwood jacks

[6string]

My neighbor has an older bounder diesel with a bad Atwood jack. He has been told Atwood is out of business and there are no parts or jacks available. This is an electric jack. Has anyone had this problem or can you shed any light on this problem. Thanks .

[imgoin4it]

I replaced my Atwood jacks with HWH hydraulic jacks. Not inexpensive, but best thing I ever did. I kept all the Atwood system and if nothing else can use the jacks for boat anchors

[Bruce_Brown]

At a national rally years ago the Atwood factory guys were making courtesy calls. We happened to be the last scheduled call of the day. After they were done we offered them a cold beverage.

After a couple of those the guy went to his service truck and loaded me up with a bunch of parts.

Over the years I've used a bunch and mailed some out to other people in need. Gears and pins were the most popular, I changed a clutch on one jack once too.

I like the concept of the electric jacks, I just wish they were more robust.

[dougrainer]

The original version had NO replacement parts. You replaced the complete jack when it had a problem. The 2nd generation they added the RPM timer. Same jack, they just added the revolution timer. You can use a 2nd generation in place of a first generation, you just do not connect the Timer and you cannot since the board is different and no wires for the timer. You cannot use a 1st Gen in place of a second due to no timer and the control board will not allow operation with no timer reporting. At one time Atwood came out with replacement motors, as the only replaceable part. All my previous sources do not have jacks or motors. IF you have a Atwood system and you want Jacks on your motorhome, you need to remove the Atwoods and install a HWH or Bigfoot or LCI Hydraulic system. I have NEVER liked electric Motorhome jacks. This goes back 40 years. They always seem to have a malfunction because they are an electric motor. Same for most OEM's. Once the lack of reliability came up after a few years, most OEM's dropped Atwoods in favor of Hydraulics. Doug

[wa8yxm]

As was said LCI (I think. Includes Lippert is the "L") owns them.. But if you can't find new check out the RV boneyards like VizoneRV (dot com) see if they have a spare or 3

[Bruce_Brown]

timmac wrote:
My Atwood electric jacks still work fine but I do have a brake on one front jack that does not hold like it use to, can I still get the brake kit ?, would not want to replace the whole system for a simple repair..

I've had them apart a bunch, they're a screw jack, no real brake in them. They screw up and down. I'm trying to think how one could not hold once it's screwed into place. I know when the pin holding the gear breaks they'll drop and won't retract.

With that said, ours are the original version. I know the second version counted rotations too plus pulling the amp draw (?) so maybe it's different somehow???

It's still a screw jack so I can't imagine how.

Maybe Doug can shed some light on this?

[eadeal55]

can someone point me in the direction of finding an Atwood Electric Jack Auto Controller - part number 80618 rev 3.

All my jacks are good, just the controller is having voltage issue and not sensing the front driver's jack hitting the ground.

Will cause the system to alarm and lock the jacks. It takes some finagling with the front jack and control pad, but eventually I can get them to retract.

[timmac]

My Atwood electric jacks still work fine but I do have a brake on one front jack that does not hold like it use to, can I still get the brake kit ?, would not want to replace the whole system for a simple repair..

[Scottiemom]

Our Atwoods finally gave out last summer. After replacing all of them at least once and a couple of them twice ($750 each), two broke at once. We started looking. Yes, Atwood sold out to Lippert, and Lippert does not make or support the Atwoods. We could only find used jacks at businesses who took them off coaches and replaced them with a different system. We didn't want to put used back on. Then we were told it was likely our controller that had gone bad. We could actually find that on line, but a new controller and 2 used jacks was not the way we thought we should go.

We had a BigFoot system put at their factory in White Pigeon, Michigan. It was about $5800, but we full time and use our coach every day, so we bit the bullet. We are extremely happy with the system. They are quick, reliable and the customer service is second to none. It is a family-owned company and their service line rings into one of their homes after hours.

Dale

[Bruce_Brown]

The short version is yes, thats pretty much accurate. Lippert owns what's left of them but support for those jacks isn't strong.

Some (many?) have changed them out for hydraulic jacks.

We're currently in the same boat with ours. I have a few parts left and even carry a spare jack. I keep procrastinating and haven't made the move to hydraulics yet. I'm sure someday in the near future I'll wish I had done something sooner.