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Larry196

Stopin The Rockin

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I have posted on here before about the side to side rocking of our class A, as many people (have),

While at CW yesterday I bought a pair of heavy duty scissor jacks to snug up the sides. I'm thinking we have done everything, airdump, built in jacks but DW says there is still enough rocking when we walk, it makes her sea sick.


My thoughts are to find a solid place mid coach or up front and gently snug up the jacks, one on each side.


I can't believe someone with an "A" hasn't tried this.

Before I unpack them I want to get some feedback. no reason to unpack if you have tried and it failed.


YOUR THOUGHTS PLEASE !!

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Larry,

Assume you have air leveling not jacks. Jacks should stabilize as well as level.

My concern with your approach is that the air leveling system must NOT allow the coach to lower-- no scissor jack would handle the weight of the coach.

Also, be sure you jack against a structural member, not part of the body.

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Brett

Thanks for the thoughts. The coach is on a three point jacks which deploy after the air is dumped and the bottom step is about an inch off the ground, then I hit the leveling jacks and when I feel them touch the ground I stop, all I really want is a solid footing.

The well meaning campers around me,seem to think with only one jack in the front it would create a pivot point which would allow rocking when we walk, (which we have).

My thoughts are to create a four point system.

Keep the thoughts coming.

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No question, 3 jacks allow more motion than 4 jack systems. We have had one of each. But, after years of sailing, we don't even notice the motion!

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A lot of 4 jack systems have the front two jacks hooked in parallel so you don't tweak the frame so bad. They will not be anymore stable side to side than a single jack.

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We have noticed some rocking on our 4-jack Class A. I don't believe it can ever be totally eliminated, but here is one technique we tried, and it has helped in the situations described.

When parking on non-paved surfaces (even compacted dirt/gravel) for longer than a few days, my wife and I both noticed that the coach seemed to rock more the longer we were there. Our theory was that the metal pads at the bottom of the jacks (fairly small surface area, especially at the front) slowly created small depressions in the ground over time, allowing more movement than when we first parked. To reduce this 'depression effect', we cut 12" lengths of 2x12 wood and place them under each jack when setting up camp. This increased the footprint and has reduced the rocking during extended parking periods.

Unlevel parking areas also seem to cause more rocking. The 2x12x12 wood jack pads are used on unlevel sites (regardless of the surface) to reduce the travel required by the low side/low end jacks. This seems to help by reducing the jack's 'lever arm' length, thus making the parking stance a little more stable. Occasionally we stack two blocks on each other (for the low side/end on unpaved uneven surfaces), but never more than that. We have also used them under tires on the low side (single blocks only, put in place while moving the coach the last foot or so into the parking spot).

To create these blocks we went to the local hardware store and bought an 8' long 2x12, and used their free cutting service to create 8 jack pads.

There may be commercially available jack pads that perform these same functions. We came up with this solution while on a trip and made use of a local hardware store.

Regards,

Eric

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