We had it planned perfectly – we had to move on our last day at Edisto Beach State Park and were trying to get out early the next morning. We would simply go dump without our toad and move to our site for the evening. Everything is packed up and ready to go. The engine is cranked and the slides are in – we are running through our list and realize the stairs aren’t in.
It’s ok, we thought. It must be something simple. We turn the engine back off and open and close the door a few times then turn it back on. The stairs are still stuck in the out position. Rats. We are supposed to be out of our site by noon and it is now half past. We start troubleshooting. We try all of the tricks we can possibly find and ultimately decide the motor that operates the stairs is bad.
We then remove the pin that will override the motor, attach a few bungee cords to keep the stairs up and go about our day.
Fast forward two weeks and we still don’t have stairs (keep in mind, I am recovering from foot surgery – taking huge steps in and out of our coach isn’t easy!). Time to tackle that issue. We read online that the same motor that operates our stairs is what was used in a 1996 Ford Taurus driver window. Who would have thought?! We went to several auto stores before finding our very own 1996 window motor at an AutoZone. Awesome.
Now it’s time to get it working. We (Austin) removed the old motor that we assumed was the problem and replaced it with our Taurus window motor. Everything seemed great and we are super encouraged. However, we had a Clemson game to get to so we couldn’t fully test it.
The next day we test the motor – wouldn’t you know that it operates backwards. When we open the door the stairs come in and when we close it, they go out. Oh dear. After some Googling, we find someone that said you can simply switch the wires around so that’s what we did. And it worked!!!
Hooray to a $66 fix of our stairs. Also – extra props to AutoZone – the part comes with a lifetime warranty. Hopefully that will be an issue we don’t revisit! We are learning that it is always something when your home is on wheels.
