Our 5th wheel has the Bigfoot hydraulic leveling system by Quadra, which came installed from the factory. The system has been really good, except for one small issue. During the auto level routine the rear jacks would sometimes stop with a low voltage message on the controller screen. Usually all you had to do is restart the leveling routine and it would finish.
I called Bigfoot to ask for help troubleshooting. They said if the controller says low voltage, then there is almost certainly low voltage. They focused on the batteries, but the batteries were new. The batter voltage at the Bigfoot controller was 13.2 with no load. How could this be?
I asked my EE friend what he thought and he said, look for a poor ground. One thing I noticed is that both the trailer frame and the jacks were painted before the jacks were installed. However, the jacks are bolted on with half inch bolts, so I thought this would be a good enough ground. The problem is that all of the interface surfaces are painted and the bolts only touch the painted surfaces. Maybe there was not a good ground path to from the electric motors on the jacks to the steel trailer frame?
I decided to run a grounding strap between the grounded side of the motor to the steel trailer from, which would bypass the painted interface between the jack and the trailer. Guess what? The ground straps fixed the problem of the leveling routine stoppage and the motors ran faster.
The devil is in the details. I did let the plant manager know about the poor ground situation and he said they would start putting bonding straps between the jack motor and the frame.
Both sides are now bonded to the generator carrier frame, which is welded to the trailer frame.
I called Bigfoot to ask for help troubleshooting. They said if the controller says low voltage, then there is almost certainly low voltage. They focused on the batteries, but the batteries were new. The batter voltage at the Bigfoot controller was 13.2 with no load. How could this be?
I asked my EE friend what he thought and he said, look for a poor ground. One thing I noticed is that both the trailer frame and the jacks were painted before the jacks were installed. However, the jacks are bolted on with half inch bolts, so I thought this would be a good enough ground. The problem is that all of the interface surfaces are painted and the bolts only touch the painted surfaces. Maybe there was not a good ground path to from the electric motors on the jacks to the steel trailer frame?
I decided to run a grounding strap between the grounded side of the motor to the steel trailer from, which would bypass the painted interface between the jack and the trailer. Guess what? The ground straps fixed the problem of the leveling routine stoppage and the motors ran faster.
The devil is in the details. I did let the plant manager know about the poor ground situation and he said they would start putting bonding straps between the jack motor and the frame.
Both sides are now bonded to the generator carrier frame, which is welded to the trailer frame.
