HappiJac Breakdown: What to Do When Your Truck Camper Jacks Don’t Work

If you’re like us, your truck camper jacks don’t get much use. We use them maybe once or twice a year, if that. The truth is we all take our jacks for granted. They’re great when they work, but not so great when they don’t.

Today’s slide-in truck campers are equipped with either a set of Lippert HappiJac or Reico-Titan truck camper jacks. Honestly, we don’t have a preference for either, since in our experience, both products are fine. When buying a camper most opt for remote-controlled electric jacks because they’re faster and easier to operate than manual ones. Who wants to mess with manual jacks in the full sun and in triple digit temperatures? We certainly don’t.

Our camper is equipped with the HappiJac truck camper system. Manufactured by Lippert, the HappiJac system is simple yet robust. It consists of a wireless remote, a receiver consisting of a large circuit board, and four electric jacks. Each jack is rated for 2,800 pounds, meaning the entire system can handle up to 11,800 pounds of weight—strong enough to raise a triple-slide camper with thousands of pounds to spare. Impressive.

Recently, we needed to remove the camper in order to perform some maintenance on our truck. The truth is most service centers won’t work on a rig with the camper mounted, so we always take the camper off. Removing the camper also gives us an opportunity to do some detailing on both the truck and the camper, which is always a bonus.

Activating the HappiJac system in fairly straightforward. The ALL UP and ALL DOWN buttons followed by the ACC IN and ACC Out buttons on the remote must be simultaneously pressed to activate the system. When the system is activated the green light on the remote will illuminate.

The effort to raise and lower the camper should’ve been quick and easy. With remote in-hand and the system activated, I pushed to “Up Arrow” button on the remote to raise the camper.

But nothing happened.

I tried pushing the button again, but again the jacks were silent.

After turning the remote off and on again and reinitializing it, I tried raising the camper again, but the jacks stubbornly refused to budge. They were dead silent.

Typically, this means the AA batteries in the wireless remote are bad. The remote sits for long periods in the camper without use and the heat of the summer will invariably drain the batteries after a couple of months.

After a quick trip in the house for a fresh set of batteries, I stepped outside to the camper and pressed the buttons again to activate the remote. I thought we were good when the green light on the remote came to life.

But again nothing happened.

I was not a happy camper.

This had never happened to me before. A fresh pair of batteries had always fixed the problem before.

It was time for some research. YouTube is a great resource if you’re looking to save time on a problem. I was hoping that somebody recorded a video addressing this issue, but surprisingly enough nobody had.

The HappiJac manual that came with our camper has a decent troubleshooting guide, but in our case, it proved worthless. Our problem was clearly identified, “green light on remote, but jacks will not operate,” but the corrective action listed didn’t apply in our case because we didn’t have an indicator light on the circuit board.

The circuit card usually has either a green (good), an orange (resting), or a red (insufficient power) indicator light on at all times. Even though the power to the card was good (the voltmeter showed 13.2 volts going to the card), we still had no indicator light. The card was stone-cold dead.

With five 25 amp fuses in the HappiJac receiver, most would gravitate towards a blown fuse as being the problem. None of the fuses, however, had blown.

We had a bad card.

Unfortunately, with a five-year old camper, the card was out of warranty, so we ordered a replacement for $253 on Amazon.com. The card reads “733513, HappiJack RF Wireless Remote Receiver – 25A Clutchless – Current Sensing Assembly.”

Removing the old card and replacing it with the new one was fairly straight forward. The hardest part was accessing the old card. The manufacturer of our camper had wedged the unit in the back corner of the battery compartment, making access extremely difficult.

I wish manufacturers kept things like this in mind when designing and building their campers, but I digress.

After connecting the power leads and jacks to the brand-new card, it was time to test. I reached inside the compartment, turned the battery cutoff switch to the “on” position, and the indicator light on the circuit card came to life!

It was green! The system was ready to test.

With wide eyes and wireless remote in-hand, I activated the jack system and pressed the Up Arrow on the remote to raise the camper.

Again, nothing happened.

I was flustered. I just spent $253 and the (insert your favorite expletive here) thing still didn’t work.

It was time to call HappiJac’s Help Desk in Kaysville, Utah. Adam, HappiJac’s customer service representative, was friendly and helpful. It didn’t take long for him to determine that the remote needed to be paired to the new circuit card.

There was hope. I had read about this problem somewhere on the Internet before, but didn’t remember where. It didn’t take long for Adam to email me the instructions on how to program and pair my old remote with the new circuit card.

HappiJac’s pairing instructions were easy to understand and follow (see the step-by-step instructions below). The system comes with a coiled RJ-11 telephone connector that is connected to both the circuit card and to the remote. The instructions include the aforementioned pressing of the ALL UP and ALL DOWN buttons and the ACC IN and ACC Out buttons with a unique pairing procedure between the two sequences with the #8 being pressed five times and the #0 button being pressed five times.

After completing these six steps, the green light on the remote immediately appeared.

Did the jacks finally work after this pairing procedure was completed?

They did. Finally. I was a happy camper.

So what’s the bottom line? Perseverance pays off. It also pays to contact the help desk when all else fails.

There’s always a bit of satisfaction when you fix a problem yourself. Paying someone is sometimes necessary, but you rarely learn anything when you approach problems that way. It’s best to do it yourself if you have the time and inclination. In the military, we call it on-the-job training or OJT.

Was there an alternate solution if we needed to raise the camper in a pinch? There is. Every HappiJac system comes with a manual crank (to use it, the toggle switch on each jack must be put in the down position to disengage the jack from the system). Fortunately, we didn’t need to do that. The new circuit card came through.