Clanging from landing gear.

[oscar]

About every half hour or so the front left landing gear clangs. Seems to be coming up from the mounting. The piston is not moving. I can make it do it by pushing on the front corner laterally. Like you take a hammer and hit the steel…..

Could be temperature related, there's a 40 degree swing day and night here.

Never heard it before…..anyone else?

 

[cookie]

I'm guessing that you have hydraulic landing gear. This sounds like you are getting the "popping" noise that those of us with the LevelUp system have had.
Lippert has a recommended fix for this. It involves removing a quart of fluid and replacing it with a quart of a product called Torco 15.
You can get it at a motorcycle shop or on Amazon.com.
HERE IS A LINK to the procedure.

Peace
Dave

 

[oscar]

Yes it is hydraulic landing gear.

But, all this is taking place while parked, i.e. there hasn't been any operation of the gear for DAYS……. ?????

 

[cookie]

Seems that some report the noise getting worse the longer the rig sits.
Since the new fluid is under $20 I would give it a try.
It stopped the noise in my rig. Others not so much.

Peace
Dave

 

[oscar]

It doesn't bother me too much, other than the principle of it.

 

[danemayer]

The fix is inexpensive and pretty easy to do. I don't know that it's been 100% effective for everyone, but it's fixed the problem for a lot of people. For two years we had a pretty constant stream of threads complaining about the noise. Since the service bulletin came out, there have been almost none, and the ones we've seen have mostly been from people who weren't aware of the fix.

Before the service bulletin came out, some people minimized or eliminated the noise by placing blocks under the jacks to shorten their extension, or by placing plastic cutting boards under the jacks to reduce friction with the ground. Those workarounds might be worth a try if the noise does bother you and you don't want to follow the service bulletin.

 

[oscar]

I have them on pieces of wood. Again, I suspect a lot of it is temperature related. It was near freezing last night, and this morning that leg was basking in the sun and ambient went up to 65 in a hurry, warmer in the sun. Inside we went from running full heat to AC in under 4 hours…… Has to be some expansion/contraction going on on a chassis 41 feet long…….

 

[Mizmary]

I'd bet it is the same issue with the hydraulic fluid stuff. We added a quart of it and cycled everything a few times. (We do not have the 6 point level up). The popping slowed but didn't stop. We recently moved and as a part of that had to cycle the slides and legs again and it's happening even less now. Even despite a temperature change from the 50's to about 80. It didn't cost much and wasn't hard to do. It didn't matter what we had the legs on - concrete, plastic pads, wood, it still did it. I imagine that after we cycle them again this weekend it will be almost completely gone. But I'll let you know.