Equalizer Systems Jack Replacement

Do you recall the Texas deep freeze of February 2021? Yeah, we do too…. for reasons other than the power outages, near zero temps, snow, and ice. We remember it, also, because our less than one-month old RV sprung a leak…a hydraulic leak to be exact. The morning after near zero temps we noticed red fluid near one of the stabilizing jacks; we knew this was hydraulic fluid but it was unclear if a leak was active or the result of the cold temps – things seem to act weird in the extreme cold – and decided to keep an eye on it.

Two relocations later and, yep, there is an active leak from the seal around the ram portion of the jack on our brand-new RV. ☹

Being that our RV was now 350+ miles from the dealership I contacted the auto-level system manufacturer – Equalizer Systems - directly to minimize the number of players involved – go to the source, I say. While there were a few back and forth emails, and photos, they determined the best way to resolve was for us to replace the entire jack - or potentially be w/out our home for a period of time. I thought ‘oh geez, what the heck is this going to entail’ – actually, I had a few more choice words, but knowing our grandkids may one day read this I’ll leave it as heck 😉

Okay, fine – send us the jack and we’ll do the work – after all, it was six bolts and two hydraulic lines. What could go wrong?!?

Below, is an outline of how I would replace one of these if I had to do it again…this is not the way we replaced it and I’ll explain along the way….should be a lot less messy this way.

If your hydraulic auto-level system has a panel like the image below than this may apply if you have a leaking jack and if not, some steps may also apply to other systems.

Ensure you have the correct jack before proceeding! Why do I say this – experience. We received a landing jack that is physically too long to fit. The landing jack is 29” in length and the stabilizing jack is only 20”.

This is not starting out well!!

Okay, now that we have the correct jack, determine which side the hydraulic hoses are connected and remove the two plugs that correspond on the new jack and set aside for now.

Gather your tools and something to either plug the hydraulic lines or allow them to drain into – they WILL leak if you don’t plug them; for us it was the jack that leaked the most – by volume, at least. The hoses…well, they squirted because of skipping a pressure dissipation step.

Raise the stabilizing jacks if they are not already.

Make note of the holes the upper four bolts are using and remove them; leaving two bolts securing the jack to the frame of the RV – loosen, but don’t remove the bottom two bolts; we don’t want the 25 lb. jack hanging by hydraulic hoses, now, do we?!? 😉 Your S.O. may think this a smart move…if they are helping, that is. Dana was with me all the way on this repair and extremely helpful.

*** Side Note – I removed the easy bottom four and struggled with the top two because of location and fluid everywhere. Anyways….moving on.

Be sure to put something on the ground to contain the fluid - whether it be containers or an oil absorbing mat to mitigate staining of the surface or contaminating the soil.

Slightly loosen the hydraulic hoses and allow the pressure to dissipate; if you loosen all the way immediately the hoses will squirt fluid everywhere - see red arrows in images below.

*** Side Note - How do I know…guess…or, not…okay, I will admit to this. When I fully loosened the hose, it squirted everywhere - thankfully, we had a mat down to contain and as for Dana and I - well, we'll need to resupply our shop towels now! At this moment we are scrambling to stop the fluid flow made inherently more difficult because everything is covered in a very slippery fluid; I am sure the neighbors had a good laugh!!

Okay, on with it!

Now that the pressure has dissipated, fully disconnect the hydraulic hoses, remove the two remaining bolts (again, noting which holes they are using) and remove the entire jack from the RV.

There are two fittings in the old jack; remove them and replace with the plugs previously removed from the new jack – this will keep the fluid within the old jack from leaking everywhere…yep, experienced this as well.

Transfer the two fittings to the new jack (be sure to also transfer the o-rings) and reposition the jack on the RV by inserting and tightening the two bottom bolts.

Reconnect the hydraulic hoses to the fittings in the jack and reinstall the four remaining bolts.

Testing time…cross your fingers if that's your thing 😊

First, open the fill cap of the fluid reservoir – ours was attached to the hydraulic pump in the front storage of our fifth wheel – this will allow for air in the system to escape. I heard one person refer to it as ‘burping’ the system; I guess I could see how that would correlate…

Second, run the stabilizing jacks up and down a few times. In our instance, the jack was a bit ‘herky, jerky’ the first two times (this was due to air in the lines) but, the third time we ran the jack up/down it was as smooth as it had ever been.

Third, if all is well be sure to secure the bottom hydraulic hose to the jack with a zip tie

Lastly, if you lost a lot of fluid top off the reservoir and retighten the cap.

• We were not aware of this but the hydraulic fluid in our system is transmission fluid - Dexron 3, to be exact

As of this post we are five relocations in and not a sign of fluid anywhere. I call that a SUCCESS!!

I’m anticipating the car guys that read this blog will have a comment or two 😉

I do apologize for the lack of pics during some of the process – we were a bit busy containing the situation and unable to operate a camera at the time.