I have been having a problem with our front levelers . they seem to stick if any dirt gets in back of them. could our springs on the levelers be week they don't seem to strong and also won't pull them in now ? This is a new problem I just push them in by hand.the back comes down slow and they are the last to come down.
thanks
lenny

IF you have the HWH manual it recommends annual cleaning by flushing the mounts and the pivots. If you spray the pivots with WD-40 and use a wire brush on the arms (not the pistons) you can dislodge the dirt that accumulates in the joints and that should free them up. IF you don't have the manual I think it is available form Bill NY or from HWH's website.

Good advice from tom K. We sprayed every piston & pivot point on ours with WD-40 and it made a huge difference.

Weak springs is also a possible cause. We turned ours 180 degrees so the outside of the curve is against the pivot point. If this doesn't help you may need new springs.

Carl Feren

Great advice from everyone here. Tom frequently crawls under the coach and drenches everything (it seems - sometimes including himself ) with WD-40.

Not only does it keep things running smooth, it also acts a preservative.

I've often thought that we should buy stock in WD-40 we use it so much, and on almost everything....

Tina

Not a fan of WD40 here, however, Tom's rec of spraying it as you use a wire brush is good. I have also used it with steel wool on rusty tools. I don't think it is as good as some other products for that, but it is cheap and doesn't smell as bad as PB.

At the airline, we had WD40 by the drum. We never really found a good use for it, other than potato bazookas. Oh yeah......And knife sharpening fluid.

I grew up with kerosene always around, either for lamp fuel, tractor fuel or just an all-purpose light oil. My dad kept a spray bottle full of kero handy. WD seems no better than that.

When the airline stopped supplying WD, we used jet fuel (kero) in a small air-pressurized spray bottle. Sure shot or something like that. Seemed to work about the same as WD.

The WD is supposed to stand for water displacing. Well, driving a Lucas magneto-equipped motorcycle in the rain will give you an education on that. WD wasn't as good as other products. Here on the coast, Toyota trucks, for some reason, got crabby in damp weather. Spraying the wires and distributor cap was the answer. WD did not stay working as long as a silicone spray.

Eventually, the airline quit buying it, or used up the stocks. Every original mandated purpose for it ended up with a better product.

Those who filched some for personal use, as well, soon ended up buying a better product for each use. PB for loosening rust, LPS-3 for thick protection, Boeshield for light protection, thicker Boeshield for medium protection, motorcycle chain lube for some moving parts, Dri Slide for others, etc.

Some of this is apocryphal, but it is suspected by some that it does, or did, contain sulfur to make it a better cutting oil, or something. Or, maybe it just wasn't refined out, I dunno. Anyway, the story was that the sulfur would combine with damp air and form sulfuric acid, or at least cause some corrosion. In the '60s, I had a nice pistol rust while I thought WD was protecting it.

However, to be fair, I do have a success story. I was once driven crazy by a squeak under the dash of a car on a long trip, and stopped an bought a can. One spray in the general area stopped the squeak.

However, my wife squeaked for days over the aroma. Even the dog sneezed.

End of rant.

Shields up.

Super Lube aerosol is likely the best candidate. WD-40 has (speaking as a recovering fuels and lube engineer), no earthly purpose as far as I can tell.

quote:

Super Lube aerosol is likely the best candidate. WD-40 has (speaking as a recovering fuels and lube engineer), no earthly purpose as far as I can tell.


Rusty

It displaces moisture in a distributor cap...

I'm sure there is an expensive, exotic, more effective compound for every specific purpose for which WD 40 may be useful. But it's hard to keep them all in a simple garage shop, let alone a traveling toolbox, & none of them are available at any local super market as WD 40 is.

Of course, my attitude is shaped from growing up on a one-horse farm where we made do with what we had, where we never threw anything away that might be remotely useful, where we repaired, rebuilt, or substituted for broken or worn-out equipment, where kerosene was the cure-all for anything coated by, or seized up from rust, & where used motor oil was the favored lubricant for our simple farm equipment.

WD 40 works as well as kerosene, smells better, leaves less residue, & you can buy it in a pocket size container if you feel you must never be without it.

In the face of the technical & professional expertise available on this site, I sometimes feel ashamed of myself for the simple, workable solutions I have developed as substitutes for function-specific parts & tools, rather than searching out identical replacements.

I grew up in time & a culture where mechanics had to use ingenuity to repair things, not simply remove complex components & replace them with identical factory parts.

Perhaps all of this makes me an anachronism, but I still believe that RVs, including Barths, are not the products of rocket science, nor do they require rocket engineers to maintain them.

quote:

Originally posted by Rusty:
Super Lube aerosol is likely the best candidate.

Hmmmm............That rang a bell. Several of my cycling friends swear by it as a chain and shifter lube.

I've reviewed the specs on Super Lube products, most specifically, the General Purpose Grease and the aerosol. I use both, and have for years. The specs are quite robust, and more importantly, I've never had a reason to regret using it.

Great Thread! Hope the leveling jacks get repaired but now I'd like to chime in on General Purpose Lube. Years ago (6 or 7?? I bought some dry teflon based lube at a gun show for small arms. I still have a seemingly lifetime supply of the stuff for you use so little of it. It is predominantly applied in a container looking like a ladies clear nail polish container; you brush it on. You shake the container to get the dry teflon in suspension and brush it on to the gun/weapon your applying it to. The carrier must be in the acetone family for it dries and evaporates almost instantly and the white teflon powder is a dry form that adheres to the metal is the only thing left. I put this on the slides of my .45 and other automatics and basically everywhere I would shoot light oil to previously. I now use it on all small arms including an AR-15. The theory is that the dry lube will prevent/minimize the metal to metal contact WITHOUT needing actual oil. Oil as we all know will capture dust, grit, gunpowder etc and turn it into an abrasive sluice over time: thus the mandate for soldiers to constantly clean and re-clean their weapons. With this new dry lube, there is nothing wet to attract and hold grit, dust gunpowder etc.
It has worked unbelieveably well. I used to methodically clean all small arms after shooting as taught by Uncle Sam. I don't think I have cleaned any weapon for many -years- now. I simply wipe off any gunpowder blast and check the sliding of the mechanisms and possibly reapply some of the dry teflon lube. My guns look amazingly clean after pushing a considerable few boxes of ammo through them.
I am now seeking out any -dry- lubricant that can be found for I'm sold on the theory that not grabbing/holding dirt,dust etc is almost as important as displacing moisture.
I know this info doesn't apply carte-blanche to the bottom of a Barth, but I thought I'd share in case anyone knows of any good dry lubes they've come upon that work well. This stuff I have is purely for firearms.

DuPont Teflon Multi-Use Lubricant. This stuff works great on motorcycle chains. I intend to use it on my levelers now that I have been reminded to by this topic.

I've got a question regarding the HWH system

I've heard stories about my Barth having a problem where one of the levelers had trouble going back up. I'm sure it just needed to be sprayed down with some type of lubricant.

My question is, are there some type of seals or gaskets that will most likely need to be replaced on the system since it hasn't operated in most likely 10 years? Or should the system still be fine if I just clean it up?

If it's a big hassle, I might just remove it all for now, and figure it out when I have more time to tinker with the small things.

quote:

Originally posted by Curtis H.:
If it's a big hassle, I might just remove it all for now, and figure it out when I have more time to tinker with the small things.

You might remove what?

quote:

Originally posted by Bill N.Y.:

quote:

Originally posted by Curtis H.:
If it's a big hassle, I might just remove it all for now, and figure it out when I have more time to tinker with the small things.

You might remove what?

The entire HWH system. I know that might sound a little extreme, but it would just be one less thing to worry about. Unless I can get the system working with less work than removing it, that would be even better.