Troubleshooting Landing Gear Making Popping Sounds and Operating Intermittently

Question:

I kept thinking it was moving slowly but today something different happened and i know I have an issue. I had to lower the gear quite a bit to level and when I went to raise it back up, the motor would engage for a bit then it would keep running but it sounded like a machine gun. I suspected it was intermittently engaging the gears. I just bought a crank handle and the crank seems to works fine although I would hate to crank the gear down with that handle away from home and I didnt crank more than two or three turns. I took the motor/gearbox assembly off and gearbox off. The gears in both looked fine. After I raised it up a few inches. It started workinginch in that it raised the trailer but about every 5-10 seconds I heard that rat a tat tat sound again as it tried to turn the shaft to the other leg but couldnt. Checked Battery voltage and it was 13.24. I had 11.94V at the motor leads. It is a Venture Gearbox 276602 with a 142178 Motor assembly. With motors gearbox and the landing gear gear box seeming to be in fine shape, I believe I need a new motor, but is there anything else I should check?

asked by: Christopher

Expert Reply:

I reached out to my contact at Lippert regarding the issue you're having with the landing gear on your trailer and something jumped out at him right away as being the most likely culprit. He noticed that the voltage you checked at the battery was 13.24V but at the motor leads it dropped to 11.94V. This is an indication that the battery was being charged or still had some surface charge but the battery itself wasn't/isn't fully topped off and thus not entirely capable of powering the system properly.

He said the motor for this system requires 12+ volts of power to ensure everything works as it should. Whenever you drop below 12 volts, even just a little bit, you are going to have some high amperage currents because the motor ends up trying to do something it doesn't have strength to pull off. That can definitely lead to the popping sound you're getting with the gears/legs.

What he recommends doing to try and isolate the battery to see if it's the issue is first disconnect it from any kind of shore power (charger, solar panels, any kind of assistance going to the battery at all). Then you will want to clear any surface charge. An easy way to do this is to simply turn on a lower 12V appliance inside the trailer such as a 12V vent fan and let it run for 5 or 6 minutes. This will get you down to just the battery. Now test the voltage you're getting when it's at this state to make sure it's somewhere in the range of 12.7 volts.

If it's lower than this then the battery is the problem and you will want to make sure you charge it up completely or possibly even get a new one.

I would perform this test before purchasing any replacement parts. Please just let me know what you find and we can go from there!

expert reply by: Chris R