Category Archives: 142-Scottsbluff, NE

142-Scottsbluff, NE, Full-Time RVing

What?! One of the leveling jacks is stuck!

We’ve been travelling with a trailer and now a fifth wheel RV for a little over 5 years now, and we’ve seen lots of little things go wrong with our RV, and a few major things.  We’ve learned that things will go wrong and the best way to deal with it is just to stay calm, analyze the situation and check the internet for ideas and solutions.

The worst situation we’ve had was when a tire delaminated and ripped through the floor causing massive damage to the bathroom and wall and a little bit in the living room.  We were a month on the road for that problem (click here to read my post and see pictures).  We also had two wheels come off and roll down the freeway (wheel, not just tire) and had to replace the axle both times (click here and here for those stories).

The little things include screws that come loose, a window where the little plastic latch broke, light fixtures that stop working, etc.  A nuisance, but not a major problem and we’ll get it all fixed when we are someplace for more than a week or two.

Jeff and I have a system for what we each do to hook up the rig, and what we each do to get unhitched and set up at each destination.  One of my tasks is to use the leveler bars to raise the RV off of the truck’s hitch and then lower all four bars so the rig is level and stable.  We have a nice automatic system with a remote, so I can stand next to the rig and push a button and it will adjust all four leveling bars so we’re level and stable.

But, when we arrived in Scottsbluff and I pressed the button to autolevel it just beeped at me.  I then checked the control panel on the side of the trailer and saw an error that one of the bars, the right rear (RR) bar wasn’t moving.

We tried a few things and finally had to adjust it manually, using a drill to get it down and in the approximately position to level the rig.  The others could be lowered down one by one using the control panel until we were somewhat level.

Once we got the slides out and could access the storage where we keep the manuals on all the trailer systems we read up on the leveling system.  We also did some searches on the internet.  This gave us some ideas of things to try.

The next morning we didn’t have any pressing sight-seeing to do, so we pulled in the slides and tried the instructions we found in the manual and online that seemed to match the situation we had.

The error message that one of the jacks was ‘stuck’ it didn’t explain.  Since we weren’t on a really level site we assumed that that right rear jack extended all the way out and in that position got stuck as that’s how we found it when we had to adjust it manually with the drill.

But, the manual and the internet searches indicated that to correct the error where the leveling system wasn’t working was to retract all four bars, then lower each one 6 inches, then do a retract of all four at the same time using the control panel.  Voila!  It worked!

The next time we hitched up everything worked as it should.

No pictures as there really isn’t much to look at for this problem, LOL

142-Scottsbluff, NE

Scottsbluff and Chimney Rock in western NE

Western Nebraska has some interesting geological formations in an area called Scottsbluff. This area was on several of the pioneer trails leading to Oregon, California and the Salt Lake. The geological formations were used as a waypoint on the trail and let the pioneers know that they were 1/3 of the way to their destination. It also told them that the trail, flat and somewhat easy up to this point, would get much harder from here on heading west.

It was named after an early mountain man who became ill and his companions left him behind to recuperate. Instead he died and they found his bones on their return trip.

In the late 1840s thousands of pioneers headed through this area, some drawings and paintings from that era showed covered wagons 8-10 abreast and as far as the eye can see going past the bluffs.

Chimney Rock is a few miles east of the Scottsbluff area itself, and there are some other formations along a ridgeline. There is photographic evidence that Chimney Rock is a few feet shorter than it was back in the pioneer days, so you have to wonder how much longer it will look like it does now before it flattens out like some of the other formations.

The chimney is not volcanic lava as some other chimney rocks are. It’s comprised of volcanic ash and sandstone layers that were compressed over a long period of time, and then started eroding slowly by the wind.

After seeing so much of Nebraska be so flat, it was interesting to see these bluffs rising in the distance.

Here are some pictures we took:

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