RV, which stands for “recreational vehicle,” is a transportable home with conventional parts such as kitchen, living, dining, bathing, and sleeping quarters. Although not as spacious as our houses, explorers enjoy using these for adventures and convenient place hopping.
RVs, like conventional vehicles, also need essential maintenance in the process. One of the ways of taking care of RVs is called leveling.
Among the cited benefits of leveling are ensuring sleep comfort, increasing the energy efficiency of refrigerators, making sure doors are not flying and other safety and cost-saving attributes.
Materials needed for Leveling
To carry out the leveling job, the list below becomes handy to your kit.
- Leveling blocks: these can be visualized as macro lego blocks when can help gauge the relative levelness by rolling the tires over them. These are also available in stack and wedges form
- Stabilizer jacks: These tools are mounted on the chassis to close the gaps in between tires.
- Spirit leveler: The handy tool that determines the relative levelness of the tires. The bubble must be located at the center to tell that leveling is done correctly already.
- Axle: This system performs the lowering and raising of the set-up.
- External puller system: RVs are attached this another vehicle to help pull and push while doing the leveling process
Table of Contents
Steps on How to Perform Manual leveling
Leveling is one of the arduous tasks in maintaining the life cycle of a car. Follow these steps for guidance:
1. Preparation of the car
Before anything else, make sure all the doors of the vehicle are closed and the fragile things inside it are properly placed (stored, taped, packed) in safe spaces. Likewise, make certain your vehicle is parked in a manner where you can use your RV after. It is also assumed before the whole procedure that the tires are properly aired as lumping affects the result.
2. Retrieval of Materials
Get the materials you prepared such as leveling blocks, jacks, downs, and the pull system.
3. Check which side needs leveling
This process can be carried out using a spirit leveler. The bubbles inside indicate the positioning of the vehicle. Place the tool on the body of the car parallel to the side where verification is to be performed. Inspect which side the bubbles are inclined to through bare eyes; that side needs the adjustment part.
4. Use the leveling blocks
Stack the blocks and place them on the designated spaces proximate to the tires.
5. Pull the vehicle
Once all the blocks are set, pull the car to run over the blocks such that the tires are on top of the blocks.
6. Secure the wheels
Stabilize the position of the tires using jacks, down or support in between tires to make sure the vehicle is not moving backward and forward.
7. Use the axle
Now, the vehicle is ready for the main leveling procedure. Use the axle to apply pressure in lowering and raising the wheels and get to the desired level.
8. Continuous checking and modification of blocks
This is an iteration process so modifications can be made such as adding blocks.
9. Use the spirit level to gauge
To check the relative level of the tires to the ground, using the same tool in prior.
10. Iterate
Repeat steps 7-9 until the desired level is achieved.
11. Post-leveling to do
After the work is done, check your vehicle through a test driving. You should feel weird when tires are not correctly leveled.
For more visualization about the process, watch videos on how professionals do it like this video:
Conclusion
Maintaining RVs is not a walk in the park. Leveling is one of the ways on how you do it. By following the steps relayed above, you are assured that you will skip the troubles of having disturbed sleep, flying doors unintendedly open or ending owning a high-maintenance vehicle.
Leveling ensures that you are safe before you run your tires, during travel, and when you tuck yourself to sleep. Drive your camping worries away using leveling.
If you found this tutorial helpful, please feel free to share and let me know in the comments what you think.
Hi, I am Tom Hank, an RV-er since 2014. Back then, I started without much help. As you can imagine, the struggles are endless. But now, you do not have to begin your adventures knowing next to nothing about RV lives.