Kwikee Leveler Repair March 18, 2013, 06:25:38 pm Yahoo Message Number: 137501I am looking for a repair facility in or near the San Fernando Valley, CA, where I get my Kwikee Levelers repaired. Problem: The pumb motor does not run. Investigation of the cause for a fluid spot under the coach revealed one solenoid had developed a leak which led to that solenoid's connections being contaminated by the fluid. That solenoid could be shorted out. This may be the reason the pump motor now does not run, or the motor solenoid is defective, or ....
Re: Kwikee Leveler Repair Reply #1 – March 18, 2013, 06:41:35 pm Yahoo Message Number: 137504"I am looking for a repair facility in or near the San Fernando Valley, CA, where I get my Kwikee Levelers repaired." I suggest searching for one of the rare shops with a good supply of Kwikee leveler parts. Kwikee is out of business and a quick Google search showed no supplier of parts. You might want to see if the Mothership knows of any. Many older leveler parts are obsolete or unique and just about impossible to find or adapt to a available part. Kwikees did not have much of a reputation for durability or long lives. You might get lucky and find a system that has been removed and salvage parts from it.Larry
Kwikee Leveler Repair - SAFETY WARNING Reply #2 – March 19, 2013, 02:15:52 pm Yahoo Message Number: 137535Recent e-mails on Kwikee Levelers jogged my memory about an extremely dangerous scary experience we had with these levelers on our '98 30 ft Lazy Daze that I need to share with you. Anyway the levelers were not working when we bought the RV. However the sunshade mounted remote control would power up when turned on with none of the buttons activating anything when pressed on. So I pressed the off button leaving the controller in the off mode with all lights out and with the thought that I would rewire everything when I would get around to it. Anyway I didn't give the Kwikees Levelers another thought for 3+ years until the right rear leveler deployed on its own while driving down I-10 in heavy traffic at 65 in a thunderstorm in the dark just south of Phoenix. The first indication I had that something was amiss was a metal dragging sound coming from the rear of the LD. A sound I had never heard before. My first thought was that one of the tow bar arms had come loose and was dragging on the ground. A quick check of my mirrors showed that our Jeep was still towing straight. The dragging sound was getting louder. Luckily we were in the right lane which permitted me to slow down and just move over on to the shoulder and come to a stop. Once I got onto the shoulder I tried to move the LD a little further off the road for safety with no luck. I did hear a pump running a short while longer before it stopped. My thought was that the drive shaft must have come off preventing my forward motion. Not once did I envision that the right rear leveler had deployed on its own without driver input to a leveling system that probably had not operated for over 4+ years or longer. My wife and I were kind of shook up sitting on the side of I-10 in a thunderstorm with trucks whizzing by at 75 only inches away before venturing out to see what had happened. Anyway after two cups of coffee while waiting for the rain to subside I went outside with a flash light. Boy was I surprised to see the right rear leveler fully deployed and with the right rear wheels sitting up off the ground. Well that explained why we couldn't move forward. Now what can we do? How do we raise the leveler back up? Climbing back into the drivers seat I turned the power on to the Kwikee Leveler Controller hoping that since it lowered the leveler it would raise it back up. No such luck, it was inoperable just like before. After some more thought I decided to disconnect the deployed leveler's hydraulic line to release its pressure. Well that worked and lowered the LD until the tires touched the ground. The leveler was still deployed straight up/down sitting on the ground. To get it up further and off the ground so that I could fold it over was another problem. Luckily I had a long steel pry bar and some 2x4's that I used to lever the leveler further up thus forcing the remaining hydraulic oil out of its cylinder. That operation took another hour and a lot of effort due to the wet cramped working conditions before I could fold the leveler's leg over and wire it up off the ground. With the problem temporarily fixed it permitted us to drive on to our destination. Not knowing what caused the Kwikee leveler to deploy I disconnected its source of 12V power to prevent any future dangerous unwanted leveler deployments. We could have gotten killed here. I strongly recommend that you disconnect the 12V power to your Kwikee Levelers working or not to preclude any inadvertent unwanted leveler lowering since we do not know the exact cause of this dangerous event. It could have been conductive water splashing up from the road way shorting out a pump relay, a piece of metal shorting something out or cosmic rays interacting with the IC controller. Who knows? If your levelers are working I suggest that you put an ON/OFF power switch into its power line to prevent a dangerous unwanted leveler deployment like we experienced. I apologize for not reporting this incidence earlier but then I put it out of mind like some other NDE's. Lutz To: lifewithalazydazerv@yahoogroups.com From: Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:41:34 +0000 Subject: [LD] Re: Kwikee Leveler Repair"I am looking for a repair facility in or near the San Fernando Valley, CA, where I get my Kwikee Levelers repaired." I suggest searching for one of the rare shops with a good supply of Kwikee leveler parts. Kwikee is out of business and a quick Google search showed no supplier of parts. You might want to see if the Mothership knows of any. Many older leveler parts are obsolete or unique and just about impossible to find or adapt to a available part. Kwikees did not have much of a reputation for durability or long lives. You might get lucky and find a system that has been removed and salvage parts from it.Larry[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Re: Kwikee Leveler Repair - SAFETY WARNING Reply #3 – March 19, 2013, 03:41:07 pm Yahoo Message Number: 137536Questions:1. When did you acquire the 98? 2. What did the previous owner or owner say about the inoperative levelers? Had they ever worked properly? Was there work done on the levelers after the initial install? Do you know what shop did the initial installation?This could be scary stuff for anybody with levelers. Or, it could have been wired incorrectly or the controller might have been bypassed sometime along the way before you bought it. There are safety features built
Re: Kwikee Leveler Repair - SAFETY WARNING Reply #4 – March 19, 2013, 05:40:50 pm Yahoo Message Number: 137541I bought it about 6+ years ago. The previous owner was deceased and I bought it from her son. The LD had less than 10k on it with only 9 hours on the generator and brand new tires on it. The seller thought that he could get the levelers to work because they always worked before according to him. But after sitting
Re: Kwikee Leveler Repair - SAFETY WARNING Reply #5 – March 19, 2013, 08:48:05 pm Yahoo Message Number: 137549Do you have the straight-down or the knee-action Kwikee jacks? Is it the Level Best 2000 system?Kevin
Re: Kwikee Leveler Repair - SAFETY WARNING Reply #6 – March 20, 2013, 01:41:53 am Yahoo Message Number: 137554I have the Level Best 2000 system with the knee-action jacks. To: ; lifewithalazydazerv@yahoogroups.com From: Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:48:03 +0000 Subject: [LD] Re: Kwikee Leveler Repair - SAFETY WARNINGDo you have the straight-down or the knee-action Kwikee jacks? Is it the Level Best 2000 system?KevinQuoteI bought it about 6+ years ago. The previous owner was deceased and I bought it from her son. The LD had less than 10k on it with only 9 hours on the generator and brand new tires on it. The seller thought that he could get the levelers to work because they always worked before according to him. But after sitting in his driveway for 18 months they wouldn't budge when I showed up and saved $1500 off the agreed to purchase price. The RV came with its service receipts and records and there was no work done on the Kwikee Levelers to my knowledge. I looked at the installation, including the installation wiring diagrams, after the incident and everything looked very professional. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Re: Kwikee Leveler Repair Reply #7 – March 25, 2013, 07:10:22 pm Yahoo Message Number: 137729Thanks Larry. I'll keep looking. Maybe this will drive me to replacing the Kwikees with a Big Foot system.
Topic: Kwikee Leveler Repair (Read 9 times)
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Topic: Kwikee Leveler Repair (Read 9 times)
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