alichty
2014 LTV Unity TB
I spent most of this last week at Mt. Rainier Nat. Park photographing fall colors and testing out my new battery meter while dry camping in one of the park campgrounds. While topping off my fresh water at the campground dump station I started to jump into the coach side door to turn off the water pump but when I opened the door I looked down and realized that the steps were already down and I was hearing the motor still completing it's cycle. I closed the door again and again heard the motor but the steps were still down. Not a Good Sign(TM). I went ahead and got the water flowing into the fresh tank and went back to examine the steps and discovered that they were swinging freely as if no longer even attached to the stepper motor at all. Fortunately my campsite was nearby so I made my way back to the site being careful about the extended step and got out my tools to examine what was wrong.
What I found was a bit disturbing. There is a hinge pin (clevis pin is the actual name) that attaches the stepper motor linkage to the brackets for the step. In this case, one of the stamped metal brackets on the steps was bent out to the side and the clevis pin was hanging loose and bent at about a 90 degree angle. The linkage arm from the motor was swinging freely in the open air. The cotter pin to hold it in place was nowhere to be seen. I decided I needed to effect some sort of field repair to safely drive home so I extracted the clevis pin and hammered it on a granite boulder to being sort of straight again so I could try to attach the linkage arm again. I didn't have anything with me that could give me enough leverage to try to straighten out the bracket. I used a small nail I had in my parts kit as a temporary cotter pin to hold the linkage arm in place:
This worked until I got home and could call Johnson RV to see about getting it fixed.
Kwikee as a name does not describe that company's fine kwality customer (dis)service department. It's pretty much the case that an RV service department has to jump through a lot of hoops to get them to acknowledge almost any kind of warranty repair or RMA and if an assembly from the steps is sent back as a RMA and Kwikee finds any workable parts in said assembly those are returned to the dealer at dealer cost for the parts. It was quite clear reading through the tech service manual I found online getting this replaced was going to take far more than a week and it's not even clear that we will even get an answer back from them regarding whether they will even acknowledge this is a warranty claim by next week. This sounds like a company that decided to save money by denying warranty claims unless you can prove that their device really is faulty due to manufacturing. For the record actual labor time to swap in a new series 39 step assembly would take less than an hour if you had the steps on hand. The inordinate amount of time for the replacement is entirely due to haggling to get the parts replaced.
That said I decided to see if I could do a little more about patching this so I could use my Unity in the meantime. I got the clevis pin back out and used a 16" crescent wrench to rebend the bracket so it was parallel to the other one and then spent a little more time straightening the pin out. When I went to reinstall the pieces it seemed odd that they did not line up so I could access the hole:
I closed the side door to retract the linkage arm but it swung wide of the bracket location at the far back position towards the front of the RV. I recalled that the stepper motor senses resistance so it can avoid slamming curbs on the likes and was guessing that it must do the same when retracting and would stop at an appropriate location.
That may be true for a properly functioning motor but as it turns out that is not what has happened here at all. Since I could not reinsert the clevis pin I tried using a piece of heavy duty coat hanger wire in it's place and was able to get it through both sides and bent the ends so it would stay in place. I tried opening and closing the door and the steps went in and out. Then I looked at the site of the repair with the steps retracted to find this:
The stepper motor in this case is retracting at full force all the way back to the motor housing and at that point is exerting enough force to rebend the bracket almost like it was a piece of tin foil. You do not want to have a body part between the step and the coach when this thing retracts.
It is also clear that this was not a sudden failure - it has actually been dying a slow death for quite some time and one of the casualties is one of the bolts on the housing. It is easily visible in the first image at the top. At one point I bumped that with my bare hand when I was working underneath and it simply fell off. The bolt itself had broken quite some time ago and was barely being held in place by corrosion. The rusted stub is visible in the image above right next to the linkage arm. It appears that the linage arm has been slamming into the edge of the bolt every time the steps were retracted and was riding up against it while I was driving.
After talking with the service folks at Johnson I elected to put a slightly improved temporary fix in place so I can go back out next week as per my original plans while we wait to see how this will get resolved with Kwikee:
I now have extra pieces of coat hanger wire precut to the proper length in my parts kit in case I need to fix this again while on the road.
Edit: If anybody is interested in getting the service manual for the steps here is the link:
http://www.rvtechlibrary.com/exterior/kwikee_svc_manual.pdf
What I found was a bit disturbing. There is a hinge pin (clevis pin is the actual name) that attaches the stepper motor linkage to the brackets for the step. In this case, one of the stamped metal brackets on the steps was bent out to the side and the clevis pin was hanging loose and bent at about a 90 degree angle. The linkage arm from the motor was swinging freely in the open air. The cotter pin to hold it in place was nowhere to be seen. I decided I needed to effect some sort of field repair to safely drive home so I extracted the clevis pin and hammered it on a granite boulder to being sort of straight again so I could try to attach the linkage arm again. I didn't have anything with me that could give me enough leverage to try to straighten out the bracket. I used a small nail I had in my parts kit as a temporary cotter pin to hold the linkage arm in place:
This worked until I got home and could call Johnson RV to see about getting it fixed.
Kwikee as a name does not describe that company's fine kwality customer (dis)service department. It's pretty much the case that an RV service department has to jump through a lot of hoops to get them to acknowledge almost any kind of warranty repair or RMA and if an assembly from the steps is sent back as a RMA and Kwikee finds any workable parts in said assembly those are returned to the dealer at dealer cost for the parts. It was quite clear reading through the tech service manual I found online getting this replaced was going to take far more than a week and it's not even clear that we will even get an answer back from them regarding whether they will even acknowledge this is a warranty claim by next week. This sounds like a company that decided to save money by denying warranty claims unless you can prove that their device really is faulty due to manufacturing. For the record actual labor time to swap in a new series 39 step assembly would take less than an hour if you had the steps on hand. The inordinate amount of time for the replacement is entirely due to haggling to get the parts replaced.
That said I decided to see if I could do a little more about patching this so I could use my Unity in the meantime. I got the clevis pin back out and used a 16" crescent wrench to rebend the bracket so it was parallel to the other one and then spent a little more time straightening the pin out. When I went to reinstall the pieces it seemed odd that they did not line up so I could access the hole:
I closed the side door to retract the linkage arm but it swung wide of the bracket location at the far back position towards the front of the RV. I recalled that the stepper motor senses resistance so it can avoid slamming curbs on the likes and was guessing that it must do the same when retracting and would stop at an appropriate location.
That may be true for a properly functioning motor but as it turns out that is not what has happened here at all. Since I could not reinsert the clevis pin I tried using a piece of heavy duty coat hanger wire in it's place and was able to get it through both sides and bent the ends so it would stay in place. I tried opening and closing the door and the steps went in and out. Then I looked at the site of the repair with the steps retracted to find this:
The stepper motor in this case is retracting at full force all the way back to the motor housing and at that point is exerting enough force to rebend the bracket almost like it was a piece of tin foil. You do not want to have a body part between the step and the coach when this thing retracts.
It is also clear that this was not a sudden failure - it has actually been dying a slow death for quite some time and one of the casualties is one of the bolts on the housing. It is easily visible in the first image at the top. At one point I bumped that with my bare hand when I was working underneath and it simply fell off. The bolt itself had broken quite some time ago and was barely being held in place by corrosion. The rusted stub is visible in the image above right next to the linkage arm. It appears that the linage arm has been slamming into the edge of the bolt every time the steps were retracted and was riding up against it while I was driving.
After talking with the service folks at Johnson I elected to put a slightly improved temporary fix in place so I can go back out next week as per my original plans while we wait to see how this will get resolved with Kwikee:
I now have extra pieces of coat hanger wire precut to the proper length in my parts kit in case I need to fix this again while on the road.
Edit: If anybody is interested in getting the service manual for the steps here is the link:
http://www.rvtechlibrary.com/exterior/kwikee_svc_manual.pdf
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