For a vacation, travel trailers are pretty helpful and sometimes quite important. However, for hitching and unhitching your travel trailers, manual power jacks can sometimes be quite a hefty task. If your Electric Tounge Jack Not Working, There comes the electric tongue jack which can relieve you from a quiet amount of hard work.
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What is an electric power tongue jack?
Usually, most travel trailers come with a manual jack. If you are thinking of upgrading to a power tongue jack, then it is a great idea. Power tongue jacks can electrically raise and low the frame of a trailer. as the task of uplifting can be done automatically with an electric tongue trailer, the usage of these is increasing day by day.
Apart from that, a manual jack can also be used but it needs a tremendous amount of hard work for that purpose and also, and the time it takes is also very painful. Electric tongue trailers can do the heavy lifting work for you in seconds just with a press of a button.
Troubleshooting Electric Tounge Jack Not Working
Pressing a button and seeing your hours of work done in seconds feels great right? But what if you press a button and nothing happens? It means there is something wrong with your jack. There’s no need to panic. There can be 4 reasons why your power tongue jack is not working. Follow the instructions in order to see if you can troubleshoot your electric tongue jack by yourself.
1. Check if your tongue jack has power
It is a very common issue in many cases. The first thing you want to do is to turn the switch on and look for the light to turn on. If it is liting, it means you have some sort of power. There can still be some reasons for which the power jack might not work yet. Take the plug from the jack and plug it in your toe vehicle.
This way, you can use the charge field line from the alternator to power the jack. If your tongue jack starts working, then it will narrow down the problem. It means there are a couple of things going on for what is electric power jack is not containing power. You can do a 12-volt system check after reaching home.
There may be an onboard converter that is not charging the jack’s battery. Or You may have drained all the power of the battery for which it is not taking any more charge. It is better if you take it to the dealership after camping.
2. Not turning on
If you flip the switch on and don’t see any light then it means you might have burnt out the bulb of the jack or the jack is not getting any power. In that case, go inside your travel trailer and see if all the lights and stuff ( all 12 volts components) are working or not. If they don’t then it might mean that you have a dead battery. Plug the line into the truck to see if those are working or not.
If all the 12-volt components are working perfectly, it means that it is just the power tongue jack that is not getting the power.
3. Breaker or mini breaker or fuse not working
In the case of the power jack not getting any power, you’ll have to take a look at the fuse or mini breaker. For that, you’ll have to find one cord that comes off of your electric tongue jack which is your power cord. It is actually grounded through the bolts into the frames. Follow that and you’ll find a breaker or a mini breaker or a fuse. If it is a fuse and it’s broken, then you’ll need to replace it.
In the case of breakers, you’ll need a bolt meter to check if it’s working or not. If you don’t have a volt meter, then you’ll either have to buy one(Click here)or take the tongue jack to the dealership. Attach the positive and negative sides of the volt meter to the breaker to see if it has power or not. If there is still no power, you’ll have to check the voltage of the battery doing the same thing.
If the fuse is fine and all the breakers have power, then there might be various internal issues that are causing the power disruption to the tongue jack.
For example.
- There could be the internal spade connections on the internal switch that have loosened.
- The switch that you are pushing might have a loose connection with the power cord.
- The motor might also be failed throughout the journey or for any other reasons.
In times of all these cases, you’ll need to show the power jack to the dealership from where you’ve bought the jack in order to fix the issue serviced. You would want to take out your manual jack and do the manual work to be able to set up your travel trailer. After reaching home, you would want to give a visit to the workshop of your dealer.
We have a detailed article on "How to Troubleshoot RV Power Cord Reel Not Working!" [Consider reading, it will be helpfull]
How to manually operate your tongue jack?
To be able to manually crank and operate your tongue jack, you’ll just simply remove the rubber cover in front of the top of your tongue jack and use the manual override wrench onto the manual drive shaft.
To operate the thing,
- You’ll have to turn the wrench counterclockwise to retract the jack leg.
- You’ll have to turn the wrench clockwise to extend the jackleg.
4. You have a mechanical issue
This is the worst-case scenario if you have a mechanical issue. There are a couple of different things that might have gone wrong
- You might have bent the ram tube and thus it’s never going to slide into the housing tube the way it should have. It is preventing your tongue jack from moving up and down properly.
- There could be a bad thrust-bearing or bevel gear inside the tongue jack.
Unfortunately, if this is the case, you’ll require a new power tongue jack. To get a new power tongue jack. Click here.
Conclusion
Electric tongue jacks are very helpful compared to manual jacks. However, sometimes, there might be simple problems like these that can be solved easily via following the methods. In some cases, you’ll need to take your jack to the dealership in order to fix the whole thing.