Design Flaw on new 2015 327CK??

[Dutch Oven Man]

We took delivery of our 2015 327CK in April and have spent about 8 nights in it so far. Everything for the most part has gone well so far except for a broken gate valve cable.

Today, when we arrived at home, our landing gear would not operate. There is very little clearance between the truck and the front storage, so I couldn't really diagnose the problem with the truck still hooked up. I proceeded to get out the manual crank to lower the landing gear and realized I had a serious problem. The access hole to manually lower the jack is not accessible no matter how hard I try.

Under normal circumstances you would open up the propane access door and the handle to the crank is long enough to extended past the exterior of the camper. But, when they designed the door placement, the door is too far back, or the hole for the crank access is too far forward. Either way, there is no way to crank the landing gear without a wobble jointed hand crank. Of course, the one supplied with the camper is rigid and would never work because you cannot come at it from an angle, it has to be straight to fit over the shaft.

It's really frustrating because all of the fuses for the landing gear are in the front hold, which is not accessible when the truck is hooked up. But, you also cannot manually crank down the gear due to poor engineering. I was too tired to mess with it tonight, but I'll end up having to use bottle jacks to get the truck off the hitch so I can figure out why the landing gear won't work.

Hopefully Forest River will fix this for future builds.

[AVid]

I never thought of that. Thanks for the heads up, I'll check mine later today.

John

[Lefty59]

Originally Posted by Dutch Oven Man

...
Under normal circumstances you would open up the propane access door and the handle to the crank is long enough to extended past the exterior of the camper. But, when they designed the door placement, the door is too far back, or the hole for the crank access is too far forward. Either way, there is no way to crank the landing gear without a wobble jointed hand crank. Of course, the one supplied with the camper is rigid and would never work because you cannot come at it from an angle, it has to be straight to fit over the shaft.

It's really frustrating because all of the fuses for the landing gear are in the front hold, which is not accessible when the truck is hooked up. But, you also cannot manually crank down the gear due to poor engineering. I was too tired to mess with it tonight, but I'll end up having to use bottle jacks to get the truck off the hitch so I can figure out why the landing gear won't work.

Hopefully Forest River will fix this for future builds.

This sounds similar to the problem we've had with the crank handle on our 312QBX. Our access is also through the propane door and during our walk through I remember the tech showing me the manual crank handle but I didn't really try it. Later, I found the originally supplied crank handle was missing a c-clamp to hold the plastic handle part to the shaft, so the dealer replaced it with another crank handle. On our first trip out, I tried to use the new crank handle and found it wouldn't fit on the landing gear shaft or the living room slide shaft...the hole in the end was too small.

The dealer now has another crank handle on order...but I'm not sure if it is a wobble jointed shaft or just a straight shaft but either way you can bet I will make sure that it works this time...on the landing gear, the living room slide as well as the rear stabilizers.

Hope you get your issue resolved...

[AVid]

I went out and checked mine and it is fine. Crank works as it's supposed to. I'm going to guess that you guys have the new frame and I have the old one. Someone didn't think the new design all the way through.

John

[Dutch Oven Man]

Mine is the new drop frame, so it appears they overlooked how you could access the manual crank. I guess you could say it's now been "field tested" and it doesn't work?