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Jacks or Better

Tim R. Enright
RVs are designed to wiggle. That keeps them from shaking apart while traveling down the road. The suspension helps keep the ride inside the RV a bit smoother. If they were designed to be rigid then the contents inside your RV would be scattered all about by the time you reached your destination.

On the other hand when you reach your camping spot you want to remove the wiggle effect from your RV. Depending on the type of RV you own there are several items on the market to help you achieve this. All jacks will reduce the bounce you experience from the suspension. You use them to lift the tension off of the springs. You should never actually lift the RV with your jacks. This could cause damage to your frame. What is more difficult is removing the front to back and side to side sway you get after the jacks are down.

If you have a motorized type of RV (Class A, Class B, Class C, Bus, etc.) then most likely you already have 4 built in jacks to lift your rig. This helps remove the flexibility of the suspension from the equation. This method is quite effective in stabilizing your rig. You could add Wedge Type Wheel Chocks or even Slide Out Support Jacks but this will only provide a small amount of improvement.

A towable RV (Trailer, 5th Wheel, Pop-up, etc.) will provide you with more of a challenge. Trailers are lighter and more prone to wiggle. You have two directions of motion to deal with. Front to back motion and side to side motion.

Front to back motion is easiest to correct. You need to prevent your tires from rocking back and forth. This can best be accomplished with the use of a wheel chock. Wedge Type Chocks are most common, but the newer Tire Locking Chocks that go between tandem axles work best. With this type of chock you will experience almost no front to back motion.

Side to side motion is a bit harder to deal with. The front of a trailer has a tongue jack. This along with the aid of the front stabilizer jacks help quite a bit. Fifth wheels on the other hand can be fitted with King Pin Jacks. These provide stability to the front of a fifth wheel trailer. They also help with front to back motion somewhat. The King Pin Jack is better than Wedge Type Chocks but, not as good as the Tire Locking Chocks in eliminating front to back motion.

Reducing side to side motion at the rear of the trailer can be a challenge. Two types of jacks are common in the rear of trailers, stabilizer jacks and scissor jacks. Stabilizing Jacks provide better support than Scissor Jacks. Scissor jacks tend to flex more from side to side. The front to back flex of the jacks can be controlled by your wheel chocks. Either type of jack can be made more stable with the addition of RV Leveling Blocks under them. The less you extend your jacks the fewer wiggles you will have.

Hopefully these tips will help you keep the Jello out of your RV. If you would like more stiffness out of your unit then check with your local RV dealer. There are a whole slew of other bars, jacks, chains, poles and other gadgets to help get the wiggle out.

Article Courtesy of : BugSmacker : Copyright 2011

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