Keep Your Powder Dry--and Your Landing Gear Greased

We were just preparing to head out on the road after a few months hunkered down in the northwest. We'd got everything tied down, packed into place, and rolled the pickup into position to hitch up. At that moment, it all came to a halt: The landing gear refused to budge--or rather, it refused to lift the fifth wheel high enough to get onto the saddle.

What happened? Our landing gear, neglected over a several year period, simply chewed itself up, leaving no gears to mesh together. Happily the manufacturer still existed and within a few days we were able to rebuild the landing gear system and head out on the road.

This problem might have been avoided if we (and previous owners) had been smart enough to keep the landing gear greased. And it wouldn't have been a tough job, really a simple matter of popping a dust cover off the top of the landing gear posts (inside the front compartment of the fifth wheel) applying the appropriate grease, and running the jacks up and down a few times.

Check your owner manual or call your manufacturer. Find out how to properly maintain your landing gear and you'll sleep better at night, while your landing gear will slide better by day.

Don't park your tow vehicle in this driveway

Looking for a new home? Well, if you own a pickup truck or any vehicle longer than about four feet, we strongly suggest you do not choose this residence, or if you do, we suggest you park on the street and avoid this driveway. Now, who in his or her right mind would design a driveway like this? We don't know the source of this photo but felt compelled to pass it along to you.

Free fifth wheel trailer: Tow it away and it's yours

Looking for a fixer-upper fifth wheel trailer? If you live anywhere near Yelm, Wash., you can get one for free -- the only catch is that you have to tow it away. The RV is being advertised on Craig's List with the following message: "We need someone serious and willing to haul this camper away. Please send and email with your phone number and when you could pick this up. Condition of the camper - very poor." Click here if you're interested.

Charging Your Fifth Wheel Battery With Your Truck Alternator

You've boondocked (dry camped) for a couple of days now. You've taken showers, run the lights, maybe watched a little television. You know your fifth wheel batteries need a little charge, so why not just fire up the truck engine and charge them up? Not a bad idea, but if you're not properly equipped, you'll find that you can charge like mad and not seem to make headway. What's the problem?

While your fifth wheel "umbilical" cord does have a "charge wire" in the connector, typically the size of the wire is quite small. To adequately charge an RV "house" battery, a heavy gauge wire is required. Think of it this way: Your rig is on fire, and you've got to put it out. The firemen arrive, but the hose they connect to their truck is only about as big around as a soda straw. Bye, bye fifth wheel!

What complicates the situation is that the farther your fifth wheel batteries are from the engine compartment of your tow vehicle, the larger the diameter of the charge wire needs to be. On some fifth wheels the manufacturer actually puts the batteries clear at the rear of the fiver, compounding the problem.

In our rig, we calculated the need of 40 amps of charge power for the batteries, and ran the appropriate heavy wiring from the battery isolator under the hood of the truck back to a heavy duty fitting on the rear bumper. We then ran heavy gauge wire from a corresponding receptacle on the trailer to the RV house batteries--a long lead on the "trailer" side attaches to the truck side. Now whenever the truck is running, a good amount of current gets to the house batteries. If you do this, you can use the truck frame and RV frame is one "side" of your connection (negative ground in our case). If you use a positive wire and negative wire for the connection, be sure to take the entire length of the wire run (both positive and negative) into consideration when you calculate your wire gauge needs.

In "a pinch" situation with the truck disconnected from the fifth wheel, move it around to where you can reach the fifth wheel batteries with a good heavy gauge battery jumper cable. Be sure to observe polarity!

New Way of Hauling Your 5th Wheel

A lot of strange things pass over the desk. We got an e-mail sent along to us regarding a fellow out of Utah whose working on a new towing system for his fifth wheel, using a gooseneck hitch and his SUV as a tow vehicle.


The e-mail is straight-forward enough--of course, in our innocense we can't tell whether this is as my 8th grade US history teacher used to say, "Is this ho-ho, or is it the real thing?" You'll have to judge for yourselves.

5th Wheel RVers, Don’t Get Caught With Your Slides Out!

My 2004 Hitchhiker 5er had three slide-out rooms. Twice my largest slide-out sheared a pin and was stuck in the out position. The first time it was repaired under warranty but the second time I had to do it myself – warranty or not because I was out in the middle of the Sonora Desert. I highly recommend that if your slide out is the rack and pinion type, that you find out what size the shear pin you have and keep a couple of them in you tool box. In my case the shear pin was a small grade 8 bolt. On my Hitchhiker, each slide-out has only one motor. The motor drives the one leg of the slide-out gear and also turns an extension arm that turns the parallel slide-out gear. The shear pin keeps the extension arm turning in unison with the main motor gear. When the pin shears off (and it will eventually) one side of the room comes out while the other side does not, leaving the room in a cockeyed position. To remedy this, detach a portion of the plastic under-cover opposite where the slide motor is located. Remove any pieces of the old pin and replace it with a new one. Make sure the room is completely closed when you do this so as to align the gear teeth properly so they will move the room in and out uniformly. You may need to use a cargo strap to pull the slide back in once it is extended. Helping to keep your prepared for the inevitable – Jim Twamley

Do-it-yourself Fifth Wheel: See how it was done

The results of this homebuilt fifth wheel look anything but home-built. The final product looks like it rolled right out of a major factory. See the step-by-step process of how a fellow built his own fifth wheel trailer, complete with slide-out. The project took seven months. Total cost $9,300. Very impressive. This video runs about five minutes.