Peggy:  

Ah, you have a "hydraulic Poltergeist."  Seriously, most likely air trapped in the lines / cylinder.  Very common.  The usual way to get air out of the system is to extend the cylinders all the way. Let it sit and cycle them up and down.  I'd check your manual for the correct procedure for your particular system.  That's the one for mine.  But our frame has no issues being totally off the ground.  Some other frames may not like that.  It depends.

Assuming what you are describing is what it usually is there is no real concern the jacks will "fall."  My first set of "Big Foots" had no air bubbles at all in them - hence no "popping" sound.  My second set took forever to finally stop popping once, twice - sometimes three times in an evening.  When it happened Linda I would just say: "Poltergeist is back."  Out of curiosity I actually made some very precise measurements to see if the jacks actually moved after these sounds.  Not a millimeter.  Never moved.  So I have little concern about the noise and after a while it just went away.

Bill

Ahh, I can sleep again. Thanks for the relief flooding through me!

Do you believe this !!!! I now have heard popping noises!!! Quit bringing theses things up people!!! You are killing me!

There have been numerous posts on the Heartland forum about this. It is called the "Lippert pop" on there. Supposedly if you add a CAT hydraulic additive to the hydraulic fluid, that was supposed to be a "fix" for it, however, we added it a couple years ago and we still get the pop, although it seems to have lessened it some. In our experience, it happens more often when the jacks are more extended and/or the temperatures change quickly.

-- Edited by 2riker2go on Wednesday 16th of November 2016 06:12:52 PM

igotjam wrote:

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After lots of problems with my Lippert Hydraulics I switched to electric in my next 5er. Never had the popping noise but its another reason I'm glad I have electric jacks and slides.

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 For those doing research, or interested, we've had both types, hydraulic and electric slides and experience with electric jacks. In the past 8 years we've had no issues with the Quadra Big Foot leveling jacks except to replace a limit switch and a leaky fitting which Quadra did for free and handed me spares, along with hydraulic hoses, "just in case."  I seem to read of more problems with the Lippert leveling products than the Quadra products at least on this forum.  But to the point, electric and hydraulic have their benefits and problems.

(I will note the "Auto Leveling" system on both products can and does have issues.  They can get "confused" after travel as to what is level.  We never use auto leveling because it can put more strain on everything then if I do it manually.  IMO, manually is just better all around and takes no more time.  But that's just my opinion based on experience.)

Hydraulics can "leak."  But if properly installed they don't unless something breaks.  Electric have the problem of enough torque - especially if the battery is a bit low.  We had a lot of trouble with the electric bedroom slide on our previous trailer.  To get enough torque to move a slide with a 12 volt motor takes a lot of gearing.  We were always having trouble with the gear box breaking - especially the shear pins.  I actually carried spare motors and gear assemblies for the big slides.

So far our slide hydraulics on the NH have been fine and due to our frequent travel the slides and leveling jacks get a lot of workout.  We have had two shear bolts break on the L/R slide.  That system is Lippert.  The leveling jacks are Quadra.

I strongly suggest never purchasing a trailer / MH that does not have individual controls to extend and retract the slides.  Many times we need to open just one slide.  We've had to camp with one slide in due to trees.  Just is what it was.  With a single slide control button one can never know which slide will open first nor can you open or leave retracted just one slide.  Please keep this in mind when selecting a product.

All of this is not a Ford / Chevy discussion.  Both types can have issues.  All-in-all, based on experience, I've definitely come to prefer the hydraulic system.  But that doesn't make electric "bad."  It's a choice.  

We also had the "popping" noise with our 2016 Big Horn.

We have NOT experienced any popping noise with our 2017 Cyclone.

Gotta love the forums for research and answers....there is nothing that compares.

Susan

We've had that also. It's called "hydraulic stiction", and is not limited to just the Lippert system--it can happen in any hydraulic system. If you want to learn the technical details, you can do so here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction. We added a quart of the CAT additive and it solved the problem. Be sure to remove a quart of the existing fluid before you add the additive; otherwise, your reservoir will be too full and there won't be a high enough concentration of additive to do the job. LCI's instructions do say that you might need to add a second quart of additive to completely solve the problem.

I've been told that the alternative "fork oils" approved by LCI don't work as well, because they are oil + additive rather than pure additive like the CAT fluid. I don't know if that's true or not but thought I would pass it along.

Regardless, your jacks will NOT collapse. But the noise is enough to make you think they will!

I had the problem a couple of times and noticed that it only occurred when the jacks were extended out a lot. It happened at night when the temperature dropped. I put several leggo type leveling blocks under them so there was less extension and the noise stopped.

Those boxes look like a good idea. The less the rams are extended, the less leverage there is and it should make the whole set up stiffer, and more stable. How's it working in real life?