I drove the Winnebago to Moscow, and it occurred to me it might make a nice, brief write-up! Moscow, Iowa, not the Moscow you are probably thinking of.
The purpose of my trip was to get self-leveling hydraulic jacks installed on the 2016 View I bought from my parents. HWH, Inc. of Moscow, Iowa is the original equipment manufacturer for jacks, slides, and other moving parts for Winnebago and many others.
I wanted self-leveling jacks, since the campsites my wife and I frequent are rarely level. State and National parks are of course usually just a dirt clearing, or maybe a gravel pad. Our site at Yellowstone last summer was nicely paved with asphalt, but, was nowhere near level.
Even busy campgrounds near the interstates often have a mix of paved and unpaved sites, and little chance that they are level. You can use manual jacks, leveling blocks, etc., and I did that with our travel trailer for years with great success. But the View is about 11,000 pounds and resists manual leveling. You also have very little cargo room to carry the manual jacks, even if you wanted to.
With this computer controlled, hydraulic system, you push a button and the RV levels itself. Being out of level doesn’t bother me every time, but it drives my wife nuts. We have had some unusual sleeping situations, I’ll admit, where we either are sliding towards the foot of the bed because the cab is aimed downhill, or, our heads keep butting against the “headboard” because the tail of the RV is aimed downhill.
My parents ordered the RV new and it is pretty loaded, but they left the jacks off because they just went to the same three or four upscale locations with all paved, level sites that they had visited for years with their big Class A diesel pusher. They didn’t need the jacks because they didn’t use the View like we do.
HWH is about 800 miles each way from my house. So why bother with them? Well, I called three Winnebago dealers near home about getting the jacks added. The dealer who sold the RV new to my parents, never got back to me. Another dealer quoted $4100 for the kit and $2000 labor, which seemed awfully high. A third dealer was honest about not being familiar with adding jacks to the View and said they didn’t want to do it.
I thought about installing them myself, and the actual wrenching looks fairly easy. But, you have to tap into the vehicle’s electrical system multiple times for a number of reasons. Power for a little hydraulic pump and the gyro level sensor, of course, but also an interlock to keep the jacks from deploying unless in park, and another interlock keeping the Mercedes chassis in park unless the jacks are retracted.
So, the multiple warnings about the wiring modifications were enough for me to sit this one out. I decided to call HWH directly and long story short, they will do the installation for $4000 plus tax, turnkey. So for less than the price of the kit at my local dealer, I can get it installed by the same people who design, build, and install the systems for the Winnebago factory.
So, driving there and back seemed like a reasonable inconvenience to get it done right. Indeed, there was a large group of new Winnebagos there waiting to have the same lifts installed by the same hands. So I felt I had made the right choice.
They wanted me there at 7am for the install appointment date. I left home 36 hours earlier, drove part of the way into Kentucky, then arrived at HWH about 4pm the day before. They do have shore power for RV’s arriving for service, but no other connections (the lead picture is me sitting outside the factory for the night). I brought fresh water in the tank from home, and was pleasantly surprised to pull in a couple of dozen TV channels with the digital antenna.
The morning of the installation, they brought me into the shop to show me all the parts before and after installation.
Due to the poor cell service, the pictures did not upload so I am sharing the brochure pictures here.
There are four hydraulic jacks, two aft of the engine and two aft of the rear axle. The hydraulic pressure lowers them, and they self-level. Metal springs then cause them to retract. So, in theory you can never get stuck with them “down”. There is a switch to relieve the pressure if all else fails, and then the springs do their thing.
This is all you see from the driver seat:
You park, then with the engine running, press “auto level” and wait about 60 seconds. The jacks go down and self-level the RV. When they are done, the red “JACKS DOWN” light glows and a pleasant Cadillac-like chime sounds.
When you are ready to leave, start the engine and press “auto store”. The jacks retract, the red light and chimes go off, and a green light above “travel mode” comes on. That’s all there is to it. The system is maintenance free, though they recommend spraying the jack shafts with WD-40 if you leave them deployed for months on end in challenging conditions, such as spending six months parked at an oceanfront space.
Getting a much needed bath at a truck wash in Reno.
I drove on to California from Iowa to see family. My wife flew to California to join me, and we meandered back home to North Carolina through Northern California redwoods up into Oregon, then back down to Mt. Shasta and Mt. Lassen, California, Nevada, Utah, et al. I was gone 15 days and covered 6,700 miles on the nose. I’ll try to write up more of that journey as well!
Did you stop in Paris (Kentucky)? Lebanon (New York)? Damascus (Virginia)?
Nice article, by the way.
Don’t forget Paris Texas🚗🚙
I just got back from a week visiting family in Paris, Missouri — about 200 mi. south of Moscow.
In Australia we have a Texas, Queensland!
And in Queensland, we could have 2.6 Texas’s (Texi?) according to internet geography.
It’s a slow day.
Don’t think Americans ever thought Texas would need a plural, so you’re good.
Not on this trip! But I did go through Damascus over the July 4th weekend……
“So, driving there and back seemed like a reasonable inconvenience to get it done right. Indeed, there was a large group of new Winnebagos there waiting to have the same lifts installed by the same hands. So I felt I had made the right choice.”
I’d have done the same thing. Living in the Midwest as well, it would be worth the drive.
Trailers, boats, RVs are a personal thing. I don’t have an RV, but two boats on two trailers means I’ve definitely tweaked and accessorized to avoid my version of sleeping with the blood rushing to my head.
While most know that Indiana is the RV capital in the US, not all may appreciate just how much of the leisure vehicle industry and its suppliers are in the Midwest. My ShoreLand’r trailers’ hailing port is Ida Grove, IA, and feature several components from Dutton-Lainson Company in Hastings, NE. Some manufacturing is still alive in the Midwest.
Sounds like a nice trip, if you got to N. Cal. and Southern Oregon. Beats the scenery in Moscow. 🙂
We covered NorCal fairly well this time, combined with some prior car travel. We got just a taste of OR, and want to go back for sure! We will probably do a more comprehensive OR/WA/ID trip of it’s own in the next year or two.
When the National Parks reopened online campground reservations a few weeks ago, I jumped on and managed to grab a week at Yellowstone in October, so I hope to be able to make it.
Just another terrific, non-car CC article and a great read for anyone with even a casual interest in the RV lifestyle. Although an option (and one that the original owners certainly didn’t seem to need), I would go so far as to suggest the self-levelers would pay for themselves in the long run for the increased resale value. Although not a true RVer, I’ve done my share of car-camping and trying to sleep at even a slight angle is definitely a PIA and very likely something someone new to sleeping on the road never considers until that first night.
“or, our heads keep butting against the “headboard” because the tail of the RV is aimed downhill.”
Back in my Boy Scouting days, I was taught that if you’re sleeping someplace that’s not level, you should orient yourself so your feet are pointing downhill. If you try to sleep with your head facing downhill, blood will rush to your head and keep you awake.
Yup; heads up!
Our Promaster van has a slight tail-up stance, which some folks find annoying and fix with various means. But it’s actually somewhat helpful as most campgrounds are invariably a bit less than level, perhaps to help with drainage. That means I can use the van’s slight tilt to our advantage. And we’ve found that as along as our heads are higher, we’re ok with some additional tilt. Since we mainly boondock, perfectly level camping pads are total strangers to us. If there’s too much tilt, side to side or end to end, I do carry a pack of those plastic levelers.
Nice article, and nice trip!
I’ll never own one of these things, but still an interesting article. Now, how about all those old buses and trains in foreign countries?
How much does the system weigh? What’s your payload?
You have to really watch the payload, yes. My available payload with a full tank of fuel is about 950 pounds…..so that needs to cover the LP tank, three water tanks, passengers, food and cargo, etc. The leveling system (four jacks and a small pump with the gyro and circuit board) is about 200 pounds.
I have installed SumoSprings to “unofficially” add 1400 pounds payload to the rear axle and 1000 pounds additional to the front. It made a huge improvement in handling and ride quality, aside from giving a buffer zone on the payload.
There is not a lot of storage room in the View, so that helps hold down on overloading. Underneath, you basically have only two compartments, one the size of a large suitcase and one the size of a carry-on. The other access doors for the underside conceal the connections, the tanks, the diesel generator, etc.
I do not travel with a full water tank, and keep the waste tanks drained as much as possible. The three water tanks are 40 gallons each, so if they are all full, that’s a problem (about your entire payload right there). If we are heading into a state or national park with no connections, I’ll fill the fresh water tank on the way into the park, and drain all three tanks at the dump station on the way out.
That’s great that you guys are getting a lot of use out of the RV. Wild though that Winnebago doesn’t just buy the jacks in bulk and install them along with everything else, that’s quite a big fleet of unsold units pictured there waiting for them.
This is the year to RV. Stay the heck away from everyone else and fuel is cheaper than soda. I saw Unleaded for $1.64 and Diesel for $1.79 in Laramie this afternoon (two miles in from I-80, not right at the ramp)
I was gone 15 days and I don’t think I used a single public restroom. Also, only ate a couple meals out the whole time. It was great!
Definitely true about this being the year to RV. For that matter, this might be the decade to RV. I really wish that I had an RV or trailer right now. In fact, we’re considering renting an RV for a trip out West next year (hoping that travel isn’t forbidden by then), but I’m thinking I’d want to make reservations awfully early since it’ll undoubtedly be a popular thing to do.
Long-distance driving this year is odd, since restaurants or restrooms may or may not be open. We just returned from a trip from Virginia to Missouri to visit family. We drove the 1,000 mi. in one long day, stopped only for gas & minimal restroom breaks (hwy. rest stops were open), and packed our own food. But just in case, we also brought a bucket along… in case the rest rooms were closed. Fortunately, we didn’t need it.
We drove the 1,000 mi. in one long day, stopped only for gas & minimal restroom breaks (hwy. rest stops were open), and packed our own food. But just in case, we also brought a bucket along…
Straight out of “Driving While Black” 🙂
Glad you got the self leveling system on the RV, it does sound like a handy system. I’m going to guess the system requires more maintenance in the rust belt where road salt can corrode the system.
The Willamette Valley is a pretty place, you should check it out sometime!
East Berlin, Connecticut comes to mind. On the level front, motorhomes are harder to level than caravans/ trailers. If you have an absorption fridge, it needs to be level.