Thor Forums

[10scDust]

2016 Thor Outlaw 29H, class C.

Where we live, TN mountains private gravel road, we need to ford a creek to get home, plus part of our driveway through a slight dip.
We keep experiencing the level jack's feet dragging in the gravel, so much so, they were always full of stones.

Being the mechanic that I am, I used a separate hydraulic jack, heavy duty jack stand, and crawled underneath.
But safety first, I disconnected the power cable on the level system's hydraulics pump motor!
The jack cylinders have many positions, higher and lower, that they can be mounted.
I unbolted each, one at a time, raised them two bolt holes, and reattached them to their mountings.
I actually gave myself two more inches of ground clearance and the bottom foot plates are still about an inch lower than the bottom of the vessel's fuel tank.
RV not going anywhere soon, we are going over everything during its winter nap.

We plan to use 6x6 spacers under each level jack cylinder anyway when camping.

What I found, was these jack cylinder's mount brackets, the permanent ones on the frame, allow for 10 bolts for attaching them, 5 per side of the cylinder.
Each of ours were held on by 6 bolts, three per side of the cylinder.
The bolt pattern to hold them seemed rather random of the five per side available and using three.
I added 1 bolt per side of each jack cylinder.
Now, ours are mounted using 8 out of the 10 available (there are welded in nuts so you only need to use one wrench), and now all of ours use the bottom hole (where none did before).
Our bolts are 1/2 NC, and I had to clean the threads with a tap in the unused hole.

Now, I am sure six would suffice, but I feel better with eight, and if I had eight extra bolts in my shop, they all would have ten!
I used grade 5 or better bolts, 1 1/2" long with a lock washer, and never-seize.

I always over engineer things, I have a huge mechanics shop, and have spare bolts and nuts, things around often.
My next project is to build a spare tire carrier.
There is room between the frame behind the rear axle and the Reese hitch that is installed.

I should note, my notice of what I consider poor quality workmanship, all the zip ties that someone used, they did not trim the tails off.
Also, one of the side marker light's wiring was so loosely installed, that it got tangled in the rear tires, and ripped it out.
This caused the wires to whip up and ground out on the framework going down the road, blowing the fuse in the process.
Accidently found this during a fuel stop, plus fuse change again.
I had to cut the wire back and tape it off (also to be corrected on my to do list).
No fun in the rain, at night, at least the station had a roof at the pumps.