Like an idiot, I drove the motor home with the stairs down and hit a pile of dirt along beside the road. Bent it pretty bad. I was unable to fix it myself and finally took it in. $190 to fix it. An epensive lesson. The man at the RV shop said it was one of he most common repairs they have. Really stupid of me. Many those who read this will be reminded. I had the coach at home for a while to do some repairs and clean up aftr our last trip and turned them off. A new one from Camping World was $440 and I assumed the install would be fairly easy. I am trying to figure out how this whole thing was my wife's fault.
Uh-oh. I hope your wife doesn't read your last post or she may retract those stairs just when you decided to step down.
Good grief, the females are not going to be happy. When mother is not happy---no one is happy ! As Dr Phil would say, "how's that working for you"?
QUOTE(Lindsay Richards @ Oct 24 2007, 05:43 PM) [snapback]8815[/snapback] Like an idiot, I drove the motor home with the stairs down and hit a pile of dirt along beside the road. Bent it pretty bad. I was unable to fix it myself and finally took it in. $190 to fix it. An epensive lesson. The man at the RV shop said it was one of he most common repairs they have. Really stupid of me. Many those who read this will be reminded. I had the coach at home for a while to do some repairs and clean up aftr our last trip and turned them off. A new one from Camping World was $440 and I assumed the install would be fairly easy. I am trying to figure out how this whole thing was my wife's fault. Lindsay I have no idea how you can make the steps not retract when you start your coach. I have tried to make mine stay retracted by turning off the switch, but when I start the coach, the stairs retract. Maybe you don't have the wire that connects to the ignition connected from the step controller. If that is not connected, then you have bypassed this safety feature.
We had the same thing happen to us once, the stairs did not retract, and upon trying to leave our driveway, damage was done to the stair assembly. The damage was not severe, and with a heavy duty bar, the assembly was straighten. A touchup of the paint, and looks as good as new. Why did this occur, that is a good question as it has not happened again. Have checked the components but could not find a reason why the system did not retract. Now upon starting the motorhome, I listen for the stairs to retract before driving away. Can also check the stair position with the right mirror, better safe than sorry. Must be one of those mysteries of life- good grief !
When I first got my motor home the stairs did not always retract when I started the motor. Had to chek it and restart-- now they work fine-- there are ghosts in motor homes!
my older Pace Arrow was vacuum off the engine--and several times the hose would get a leak and the steps wouldn't stay up== My newer Bounder has electric steps--I have bent them several times when they refuse to retract. I look out the window, now to be sure before I move the MH. pS the 12 volt motor is a Ford drivers door window motor-$40.oo at autozone. sparky in Virginia.
I did something dumber last year. Upon checking in, I did what I always do - jack up the trailer and remove the weight distributing components so I can back in. Started to drive off - whoops, trailer was still jacked up. Had to jack the whole thing up with the spare tire jack and remove seriously bent tongue jack (Sunday afternoon, how am I going to get this repaired?). Fortunately, the CG had a bunch of huge tree trunks laying around from maintenance - pulled into my site (this makes it more stupid - I actually got a pull through site so I could have left them on!), jacked it back up with the car jack, rolled a tree trunk under it, and put it down - perfectly level! Got bad directions to a huge RV dealer, and ended up at some little RV garage. Bought a new tongue jack, drove back to the CG - it was too big. Went back, all he had that would fit was an electric jack - so now I don't have to crank every time. Next day realized the bad directions when 5 miles further down the road I saw the dealer I was supposed to go to - when I saw about 200 new MH's out front. Oh well.
