14 Aug - Departed in the Rain, Arrived at Sheridan WY and Leveler Probs

14 Aug

We packed up the RV this morning and departed the Yellowstone area this morning at 0859 hrs in the rain.  We arrived at Peter D's RV Park at 1354 hrs, nearly 5 hrs later and 267 miles.  This is site #20 of 30 on this trip.  We stopped once for fuel and once to potty the dog, but other than that and driving in a lot of rain, there were no problems.  Most of the scenery passed by in the rain and overcast from the low clouds.

Overcast and rainy nearly the whole trip

Mountains barely visible

Miles and miles of prairie

Red tinted land from the chemical they used to suppress the forest fires.

Severely burned timberland

Once we arrived at the campground we checked in quickly and made our way to our site. That is when the fun began. Our levelers misbehaved and we spent the next 5 hours dealing with it.

The problem here is the RV has to be level in order to deploy the slides.  If you cannot deploy the slides, you cannot access the bedroom where the bed and clothes are.

Explanation:

Our RV has auto-levelers.  The best invention since sliced bread..... when they work.  We have had beau coup issues with our levelers since the first day we bought our RV back in 2013.  Long story short, many parts replaced, many swear words used, and for the most part they have been behaving themselves for the last year since we left the Jayco factory when they were repaired.

Here is what a normal campground arrival and leveling should look like:
1.  Pull into camping site and position RV
2.  Set parking brake, exit vehicle, walk around and verify positioning
3.  Turn on levelers, press EXTEND + ALL + FRONT.  Front levelers deploy, touch the ground and stop
4.  Press EXTEND+FRONT to extend the front levelers further to raise the RV off the truck.  RV is very nose-high right now.
5.  Release fifth wheel hitch and pull truck away from the RV
6.  Press AUTO.  Rear levelers deploy, touch the ground then the RV.  Front levelers retract to level the RV, rear levelers extend to compensate, the process continues until the RV completely and automatically levels itself

Well, all went well today until we got to step 6.  The rear levelers normally go all the way to the ground, but today the right rear leveler would not move so the system went into error mode.

I used the procedures in the manual but no help.  I called both of my "special POC's" in the factory but got voice mail.  I called the customer service number in the factory and he suggested a couple thing but said if that does not work I will need to order parts and oh by the way the parts department is closed until tomorrow.

So, we either sit here and whine about it or we take the bull by the horns and fix the damn thing.  With nothing to lose I dove in head first, removed the leveler and using my Air Force electronics troubleshooting training I narrowed it down to the right rear leveler motor.  I removed the entire assembly, plopped it up on the picnic table.  I disassembled the motor completely and found a very dirty rotor and dirty brushes.  I cleaned them up and reassembled the whole works.  Unfortunately I did not get any pictures of the motor rotor or brushes, but they were terribly dirty, enough not to make contact and cause the error.

These problems are frustrating but I love the challenge.  Hey, they ain't gonna whip this ol' dog..

I also found where my dealership had previously replaced the rear levelers they pinched the heck out of the wires.  So I fixed that too.

All is well now.  Five hours later....................  "It is all part of the experience!"

Tomorrow we will explore Sheridan WY and also head back up to the Little Big Horn Battlefield Memorial and check out where Gen Custer met his demise.  We will also place the Wyoming sticker on our RV map!