Happi Jack

[ktnissen]

Had anyone had there happi jack system fall down. Ours had the latch, no pins.

[Hoopy Frood]

I've heard second and third hand, but nothing personally. Ours has the pins, not sure I'd depend on the latch, but I've not seen how it operates. Those beds are really heavy. And I've never heard any details about how it happened, if it did happen.

Peggy regularly reads the Facebook Grand Design postings, and she's read about several on there, but absolutely no details about how it happened. Just a lot of kvetching.

[FT4NOW]

After I sold my 399, the purchaser said the top bed flew off on the way home. Seemed odd to me since we had about 15k miles on it without issue and the pins were in.

[jjbbrewer]

Had anyone had there happi jack system fall down.

I guess it depends on how it fell down. Did the rail screws pull out of the wall? Did the engine brake fail? Did the drive rod to the left side come loose? Did the couches' brackets fail?

Some of these are known problems with well thought out solutions. Others are one off problems. Or maybe yours was something unique?

[Daleahoke]

We have debated taking ours down. We don't use it and can't see using it in the near future. But it looks really big and heavy, and we don't have a place to store it, so IDK if we will or not.

[TerryH]

I've seen several instances on the Facebook groups. The most common issue is the set screw in the transfer shaft coupler coming loose and the transfer shaft sliding farther on the drive shaft on the motor which lets it disengage in the left side chain drive mechanism. This lets the left side of the unit fall. FWIW, the new units have a different system for securing the transfer shaft so there definitely were enough instances for them to make a design change.

Here's a pic of the coupler with the set screw.



Here's a link to a video of our mods and fixes of some of the most common issues with the Happijac system.

[Hoopy Frood]

When you say "most common issue" what kind of numbers are we talking about here? It's very tough to nail down how many times it's actually happened, and how likely it is to happen.

[TerryH]

When you say "most common issue" what kind of numbers are we talking about here? It's very tough to nail down how many times it's actually happened, and how likely it is to happen.

I've probably seen it a dozen times or more. I've had many times that amount of feedback after I did the video and posted it on FB from people had found that set screw loose and were able to prevent an accident. The newer versions of the Happijac have a locking cover over that connection so LCI has seen enough to make that change.

[Hoopy Frood]

Thank you for providing some numbers. Too many times you hear, "Yeah it happened to my brother's cousin's barber's father-in-law." Tough to get an actual number most times. Especially on Facebook.

[TerryH]

Thank you for providing some numbers. Too many times you hear, "Yeah it happened to my brother's cousin's barber's father-in-law." Tough to get an actual number most times. Especially on Facebook.

Agree. It is a significant issue happening with some regularity. There was another incident that was posted on one of the FB groups yesterday.