Leveling Jacks

[Ed Sorger]

Hello everyone and I am new and I hope I am doing this correctly? So I recently purchased a 2011 Georgetown Forest River 28' MH and I used the automatic levelers - well it leveled fine however the whole driver's side went up on the jacks lifting the tires front and back off the ground. Is that okay? Or should I just do one at a time manually and not have the tires off the ground? Anyone have advice on this issue. Thanks, Ed

[paulmlac]

Someone will come along and correct me if needed but I don't believe you want to be doing that. Here's why. I have a class C with auto leveling jacks. At least on the Ford E450 under a class C, the brake is tied into the rear wheels. I was told, in my situation, it would be OK to raise the front wheels off the ground but not the rear wheels - so the whole thing doesn't roll away. Not sure this applies to class A (although it seems likely) but you probably want to find out for certain.

[oldprof1]

If the rear wheels are off the ground you have NO brakes holding the unit. I have raised my Georgetown on the hydraulics to change a rear dual which had blown but was careful to chock the front wheels even though one side of the unit was on the ground. If you level your motor home you really don't know how much holding power the wheels have so be careful, chock the wheels and look to see if the unit looks level.

[avolnek]

Both comments are correct. Your parking brake is set via the transmission and this locks the drive wheels, which I do believe are the rear wheels. Lifting either of the wheels will provide you with less "parking" brake. This isn't the end of the world as you can chock the fronts to make sure they don't move. What I would suggest, and what I have my father do, is once in the sight, check for level. My father has the auto leveling system so he has a digital indicator saying he may be 3 degrees out of level one way. He has learned just how far out of level he can go without picking up the tires. My point is that you should try to get the rig fairly leveled without the use of the jacks and use boards or blocks under the tires first to try and eliminate the tires from being lifted.

I don't feel that it will be a huge deal to camp like that on occasion but over time I could see that doing damage to the suspension, pull a brake line off or any number of things... un likely damage will occur but it is possible. One other reason I have my father keep the tires down is so that no one can come and steal the wheel! Again un likely, but could happen...