Atwood jack failure.

[Usnthedog]

4 years ago I broke a shaft in my landing gear and put in a new set of Atwood jacks. Big mistake. Atwood is belly up and parts are unavailable. I know because this set broke too. I now have a new set of Stromberg Carlson AKA Lippert. I have the old jack and am attempting to repair. If you have Atwood pay attention. The jack has a collar welded on the top of the acme thread with a short stub of 1/2" shaft pined to the collar. A thrust bearing and washer set over the shaft and the assemble is stuck into the bottom of the jack housing and thru a hole in the top plate of the jack housing. There is no centering bushing or bearing; this is critical. Steel shaft thru a steel plate with no bushing; got that. The bevel gear sets on top and mated with the gear on the horizontal shaft; the drive shaft. Turn the horizontal shaft and the acme thread turns thur the bevel gear and the trailer goes up. My problem and I see it as a design flaw. The force on the bevel gear pushes the acme thread extention sideways into the steel top plate. No bushing, steel on steel. It cut a groove in the shaft weakening it until it twisted in two. The jack stopped in place. No way to get to the acme thread to turn. I was lucky enough to have a bottle jack to lift the trailer, and collapse the leg and get on my way. But with the gear gone nothing held the leg up so it fell as I raised the trailer. Had to strap it up. Imagine if it failed while moving. So my suggestion. Pop the top cap off your jack. Run it up and down. If the gear moves sideways you are headed for problems.

Back to the repair and the question. I made a new shaft for the acme thread but the hole in the top plate is badly worn. The side movement chewed up the bevel gears. How do I and you deal with this lack of bushing. Drilling a new hole thru an oblong hole is a b***h. I hope the engineer for Atwood see this and responds. We all deserve an explanation.

Sorry for the length
Jeff

[fj12ryder]

IMO if you have a heavy fifth wheel, and it came with just one motor and a connecting shaft, I would start saving my pennies for the Bulldog dual motor/dual control set of jacks. I don't think they come any better. Direct drive, no bevel gears, no cross shaft, no noise.

Probably one of the best upgrades we did to our toyhauler.

[Bruce_Brown]

Use a step drill to true up the hole and buy or machine a bushing for it. Oilite sells some nice oil impregnated bronze bushings in a wide range of sizes for a very reasonable price.

As to the Atwoods themselves; our MH has them too. I've worked on them enough. I had a bunch of spare parts, I'm getting low on them now. I believe our next step is to replace them with hydraulics jacks. I'd doing that research now.

[ScottG]

It's too dark out now to look at it but the Atwood on our new TT sounds terrible.
When it pukes, I'll get another Barker like the one that served us so well on our last TT.

[Lwiddis]

Why would a former Atwood engineer respond? Giving engineering advice unprotected by liability insurance would be foolish, as would tattling on a former employer. His/her future employer would find out.