Video Transcript for Lippert Ground Control Replacement Leg Installation - 2015 Forest River Vengeance TT Toy Hauler

Hi there, Ground Control users. Today we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Ground Control 3.0 short jacks. These jacks are gonna be two inches shorter to help you deal with ground clearance issues. And this is what our short jacks look like when they're installed and operating. You can see it's contacted the ground. It works just like our other jacks.

It does have the same amount of travel as the longer jacks. It's just that these ones do have a reduced distance here at the bottom so you can get additional ground clearance. That can be particularly useful on trailers where you have to install it a further distance away from the tire due to issues with components in the way that you just can't move like slide out components. And they're great for if you happen to damage a jack because of a ground clearance issue. This is your solution to that issue.

Now one of the things that is a little bit different about this jack versus the standard long jacks and the way that they make up some of that shorter distance is by shortening it here at the bottom. You can see that the plate here at the bottom is a completely flat plate. The other plates on the longer jacks have a slight riser to them and those jacks are also replaceable. The foot plate is replaceable on those jacks. There's a pin that will go through.

These ones are just welded directly to it to help it get that extra ground clearance. To make sure that you get the maximum travel out of your jacks, you want them to be installed in a point where it's obviously not gonna cross that approach or departure angle. So it won't contact the ground, but you want it from the ground to the bottom of the foot light to be seven inches. That'll give you the maximum travel. Now you can be above that and it will still operate.

It's just they're gonna have less travel than they would if you we're at a distance from seven inches from the bottom of the foot plate to the ground. And these will work with any Ground Control 3.0 system. They can be a replacement for either a middle or for a rear jack. So if you do have any issues with your particular system because of ground clearance, again, this is your solution to that issue. And these jacks are going to be side specific. So make sure that you are purchasing a left for the left side of your trailer and a right for the right side of your trailer. The difference is the direction of the motor. You want the motor to be facing towards the rear of your trailer. So on our left jack here, the plate is installed on this position with the jack facing the rear and the right jack is gonna be the mirror image of this. So here we have the short jack sitting next to the regular jack here and you can see that the short one is about two inches shorter than our taller jack here. And you can see that that's mainly here at the bottom. The distance between where our lower bracket is and our foot plate here is quite a bit bigger on this one versus this one. So you can get more ground clearance with this jack. This is a replacement jack. We do have them for both the left and the right. This one here is a left jack, but the right's gonna be similar. It's just gonna have the bracket mounted on the other side. Your motors should typically face towards the rear of your trailer. So we'll go ahead and give you a quick measurement so you can see the difference between these two. But if you are replacing a jack because maybe you had some clearance issues in the foot plate or jack got damage 'cause it contacted the ground, this is gonna be your solution to hopefully prevent that from happening again. You'll wanna verify with your departure angle to see if this is gonna be enough of clearance. But two inches is quite a bit when you're talking about a departure. So let's just go ahead, or an approach angle, whichever. Let's just go ahead and see what our differences are here. So we can see that on this one here we're looking at about 5-1/2 inches from the ground to the bottom of the plate mount there. And on this one over here, we're gonna head to the other side 'cause the motor's in the way. We're only looking at about 3-1/2 inches from the ground to this one here. It might even be closer to, I'd say 3-1/2 is about right there. So yeah, that is about two inches of difference between those two. That brings that foot plate up higher. Now one of the uses can be for is actually making the Ground Control system fit on your trailer if you're going to install it. We're gonna be installing a six point Ground Control system on this particular trailer here. And this longer jack here unfortunately isn't gonna work in the location it needs to to have the proper approach clearance that we need here in front of the wheel. And that's because we got a slide out right here. So if you have a slide out on your trailer, there is a good chance that you might have some obstructions and things like that that's gonna prevent you from mounting this in a suitable location. You can always refer to the Ground Control kits. We do give you plenty of measurements there on how to verify your departure and all those things and they are in the instructions, but I'd recommend checking out those videos. If you're doing a full setup, I would watch one of those. But if you're just taking a look here at finding a solution for a departure issue, this is gonna be one of them. So we're gonna use it on this trailer because it allows us to put our jack further away from our tire than what this one is. When you're installing the Ground Control system here with the six point system, your rear and your middle jacks here should be mounted 12 inches from the edge of the tire there. So 12 inches behind for the rear and 12 inches in front of your axle there for the middle one. If you do that a little bit of leeway left and right from that, if you need to move in an inch or so to clear, you can. But as you can see here, all the mechanisms for our slide out are here and we really can't go either way without having to go a really far distance. And we don't wanna go too close to the tire for any potential contact. And if we get too far away, the further you go away from your tire the less of distance you're gonna have from that approach or departure angle to the point where your jack may cross over that threshold. And an approach and departure angle is the angle from the bottom of your tire to the either the front, which is your approach. So the front of your trailer at the bottom is your approach angle. And then from the bottom of the back tire to the bottom of the rear of your trailer is gonna be your departure angle. And it's just an imaginary line, but you can take a string and hold it up there to see that. And we never want our foot plates to drop below that line because that is a point where if the trailer, it pivots on its fulcrum, which is its wheels here. If it pivots down, if you have had some bump or something that lowers your suspension on the towing vehicle that brings the front of the trailer down, that leg could potentially contact the ground. And it's the same with if the trailer tips towards the rear on the fulcrum, which is your axles and brings the rear closer to the ground. If you cross over the departure angle, the jack could collide and cause damage to it. So we are not able to mount it here. And if we we're to go further forward, we would have issues with our approach angle on the regular jack that would come in the kit. But the short jack will give us, in most cases, Lippert says we can go about 36 inches away versus 12 inches away. So you get a much further distance of usable range with the shorter jack. Now you do wanna keep in mind your distance from your jack plate to the ground because that does affect how much travel that jack is gonna have. Ideally we want our jack to be seven inches from the ground to the foot plate and that's gonna give us the most travel that that jack can give us if you have that distance. But if you do happen to install it in a location where it's a little bit higher up, we'll say it's nine inches, it's still gonna operate. You're just gonna lose a couple of inches of travel 'cause it's gonna have to go down a little bit further to contact the ground. So with this particular setup here, we can see we've got a lot of obstructions on the side of the frame. We we're able to get it at a point that keeps us above the departure angle, but is gonna be a little bit above seven inches. I think we're gonna end up close to nine inches here once we get it mounted up. And if we take a look at the bottom of both the short jack and our regular one here, you can see how they're able to make up that smaller two inch difference is by integrating the foot plate into the mechanism so it can suck up higher into the tube, whereas this one here the fully retracted state has a portion that sticks down so you're able to pin on a foot. So this is nice. I would prefer the longer one if you could because then you have replaceable feet. If anything damage then you can replace it versus this one does not appear to be easily replaceable by just pulling a pin out or anything like that. But the distance of our tube here from the crimp point there to the bottom is actually the same on each. So we should have the same travel distance as how far this can come out of the tube. It should be about the same as this. Just the starting point on this one is just a little bit further, but the distance travel should be the same. And here if we look at the bottom of the feet, you can see the short jack has a pretty flat base, whereas the taller one here does have a slight riser here. It's concave just a little little bit here in the middle. So that's just some minor differences between the two. The concave might be able to take rocky surfaces and stuff a little bit better than the fully flat one, but there shouldn't be too much difference between them. The main thing is that this one's easily replaceable with the pin. And we're gonna go ahead and give you a measurement of the total height for each of these. But the main difference is the two-inch shorter on this one is down here at the bottom. The plate length is gonna be the same on both of these. And the distance from the top of the plate to the top of the jack is gonna be the same on both of these. So it's all down here where the shorter version gets its smaller distance. And if we take a little measurement here for total height, we're looking at about 20, I would say 24-3/4, maybe 24-1/2. The rubber cap might be giving it a little quarter inch there. And on this one here, when we look at it, looking at about 22-3/4, 22-1/2. Again, the rubber cap might be bumping it up a quarter inch. And we went ahead and took some bolts and bolted them up when matching up the holes just so you could see that the plates are the same length. The heights are about the same, pretty much exactly the same, but here's where the difference is. So we went ahead and came up to our middle and went to mount that. Now we briefly mentioned it before we we're using shorter jacks and that's because right here at 12 inches with the long jack would put us right here at our slide out components. And this is something that we can't change. A lot of times you can move stuff like propane lines and different things. Slide out components are it is what it is with this trailer. So unfortunately that jack's just not gonna work even if we we're to shift it a little bit left and right. If we we're to go further forward beyond this point to have the clearance we need, the regular jack is gonna be below our approach angle and we would have issues potentially with contact in the ground and damaging our components. So we're gonna be using the short jack here and with the short jack rather than being 12 inches from the front of the tire, we can go up to 36 inches. Now where we've placed ours, we've done ours about here. The center of it's right at about 34 inches. The edge here is right at about 29 inches. So that's where we ended up putting ours and this way we didn't have to do too much movement around. Really the only thing we had to do is we're still gonna address those hoses that we've got here and we did have to adjust our propane line just a little bit for clearance. So I put a couple of hose clamps on it up here to bring that up above. And then I did take a piece of rubber hosing and I cut out a length of it here and then slid it down the side and then I just took that rubber hosing and I slid it around the propane line to give it extra layer of protection against a bolt head or anything from our bracket here. And there's a good chance that we're gonna be doing the same thing thing over here on this side to protect the line once we get our jack here mounted up 'cause it may touch it just a little bit after we get it up there as well. So now we're gonna lift up this jack and we're gonna install it the same way that we did the back one. We're gonna line up our bottom ones 'cause that's gonna give us the proper approach angle that we need and give us a a good distance to the ground. We're not gonna be at seven inches from the ground to the bottom of the foot right here, but we should be pretty close to around nine inches. So we're gonna get a majority of the travel out of us. It is gonna be a little bit less on maximum travel than the rear jacks, but it should be pretty close. It is gonna use the same hardware to mount it up 'cause the jack is essentially the same as the rear one, but it's two inches shorter here at the bottom. You can see the foot plates a little bit different and this here at the bottom is where it makes up that two-inch difference. From the mounting plate up, it's identical. And these are a left and a right so if you're doing the same thing at home, you will need to make sure that you get a left and a right short jack for those to match up. And I'm just gonna rest it on my body there. You can see the foot plates come pre-installed on these. You don't use the little pin like we had in the back and that's part of how they're able to remove a couple inches to give you more clearance with this one. We'll then secure it with the large bolt and flange nut. These come with the the Ground Control kit or if you're replacing a damaged jack, you'll just reuse the hardware that you removed when you're taking off your old jack. We'll secure our jack using a 3/4 inch wrench and socket. And then we'll torque our hardware to the manufacturer specifications. All right, now that we've got the middle jack here installed, we're gonna install the same thing on the opposite side, making sure we get the same distance. And that completes our look and installation of Lippert's Ground Control 3.0. short jacks..