Power Gear Kwikee steps work intermittently

[just curious]

I have a 2019 Winnebago 29VE. I am having trouble with the door steps. I replaced the motor and gears last year. It has worked fine since. Now the steps work whenever they want. They may stay out when I turn the ignition off, not come in when I turn it on. Sometimes they will come in. The door switch does not always open and close the steps either. When the steps do open and close, the motor and gears seem to work fine, so it's not the motor or the gears. This started right after I replaced the chassis battery last month. I had to disconnect some of the house battery cables in order to install the chassis battery, could this cause a problem? The house batteries are 4 years old, measure 12.8 volts without a load, so they are getting close to end of life. I had heard that low batteries can cause the steps to operate irradically. Don't know if true. Everything connected to the house batteries seem to work fine i.e. lights, etc. I have checked the breakers they are not tripped.

Any suggestions what to look at?

[Morich]

Steps are a far more complex thing than I first thought as they use current to sense when to stop and start and also have several different points where the current/voltage/power can go bad and be intermittent.
This intermittent can be the hard one to sort out and may need some slow thinking/testing to find.
It "could " be a bad step control unit or it could just as well be a dirty connection. So before I spend the big bucks, I check the cheap stuff!
First I might say it is not likely to be fuses or breakers as they are rarely intermittent!
But when you've checked them, are you speaking of the ones I think will be outside under a cover near the driver? Three of these?

Click this to get best view!


But there are times when we can look past the real problem if we have a loose or dirty ground as it can rattle around and do weird things, but easy to check if we think of it!
Hiding down and behind the batteries, you should find something like this where both battery sets get their ground. It has to have a full circle (circuit) from power and back to ground, so a loose/dirty ground hiding down here could give you fits!
Maybe worth a look?




Then there is a little magnetic reed switch near the bottom of the door that controls things and it gets knocked around quite a bit for a semi-fragile thing!
They can get the reed inside bent , etc. or the wires can get dirty or broken so they get funky!

One way to test it a little bit is to take the wires off the switch and tie them together by wrapping some small wire around the lugs or some other fancy test! OR you can take one wire OFF, so that you know for sure what the switch is telling the control. It's sure to be open or closed and stay that way if you wire it this way!

Just looking for ways to do some cheap thinking about what is intermittent before going to the change of some bigger part!

The start battery is where the steps get their power, so that removes the thought about bad coach batteries. But the coach batteries can get into confusing us at times as they are connected together with the start battery when the engine is running!
the way this can get tricky is if we might have a dirty connection from the start battery and it is making it act weird because the battery power is just on the edge of working? So when we try without the engine running, it may not work the same as when we start the engine and have the start battery, and alternator, tied with the coach batteries.
With all that power tied together, there may be enough power get through, even if we have a dirty connection!

That's a terrible bunch of confusion to lay out but it may take a slow dedicated looking at each little part like the door switch before you can say one item is good and move to the next.

You might be able to find the model number of your steps and go online to find a matching manual with step by step troubleshooting layout?

[eyecando]

Most likely the motor is failing again due to poor brush connection inside the motor. It's a common problem.

Usually when this happens you can get the steps to work at least once by hitting the step hard with a foot or tapping on the motor housing.

[Ray,IN]

Kwikee steps work by switching the ground. Make sure both grounds have clean tight connections.
This may be helpful: Kiwkee Products Service Training Manual

[bmark]

Just replaced my step control module. Was having problems when driving in the rain. I can see where the sealant around the wires could allow water intrusion . The new module looks much better. so far so good.

[Shedboy]

I had the same issue, solved it wit Morich's suggestion -

"But there are times when we can look past the real problem if we have a loose or dirty ground as it can rattle around and do weird things, but easy to check if we think of it!
Hiding down and behind the batteries, you should find something like this where both battery sets get their ground. It has to have a full circle (circuit) from power and back to ground, so a loose/dirty ground hiding down here could give you fits!
Maybe worth a look?"


In my case -

The ground connection for the stair controller was below the coach batteries and collected any runoff from the battery vent caps, corroding the ground lugs. The corrosion was not visible until the lug(s) were removed from the bolt, cleaned it up and has worked ever since.

Be sure to remove power before work, the stairs have enough torque to break your body parts!

Also - you should be able to eliminate the reed switch by putting a small pot holder magnet next to it with the door open, the stairs should retract.

[Morich]

There are a couple things that I find easy to miss!
One is how we have to look when checking for corrosion/dirt on connections!
Seems so simple to look at the connections like the ground wires on a buss bar. We see it as being shiny and bright and assume there can't be anything wrong there but that is when we are possibly walking right past the problem!

Take a look at this drawing of the buss bar in this case and think what you see from the top! It can be all clean and shiny and look really good! But that is when we need to think a little about where corrosion is most likely or where dirt may collect if the connection is a bit loose.

Rust will not form nearly as quickly on things that get wiped clean or dry soon after they get wet. Where corrosion or rust are most likely to form is where things get wet and stay wet for some time to let the slow chemical process work!
When we think about where that gets us in trouble and we add a couple other things into the mix, we get a different idea of how we need to check things!

If this buss bar is what we are checking and we see the top of the stack of wires are all shiny and bright on top, isn't that just looking at the place where corrosion is LEAST likely to form? The parts we see get wiped off or dry pretty quick, so corrosion is least likely to form there!
Click this snip for best view!


Where is it more likely to stay wet longer or dirt collect if it is loose enough?
In between the layers and where we can't see it! It's in the little cracks between things where air doesn't dry it!
We have to take it apart and look and clean the places we can't see!