Landing gear problem

[PattonCE]

I have had my PP about 1 1/2 years and decided to work on a more stable leveling. The landing gear was set when my pulled moved it to my site and I have not messed with it until now. Long story short:
(1) in moving the landing gear up and down, I noticed that the left side (looking back), the side opposite from the motor side) was not moving. Crawling inside, I found the screw securing the transverse drive shaft to the gear reducer was gone. I replaced the screws and reinstalled the shaft.
(2) Then I noticed a clunking sound from the motor/reducer unit when I would extend the landing gear. Again looking inside, I see that the whole gear reducer unit is flopping around back and forth as I extend the landing gear. It does extend, but this is not good.
(3) Looking more carefully, there are no obvious places where the reducer end plate to which the motor attaches is attached to the stationary landing gear tube. There are these little tabs on the face of the reducer plate that faces the side of the stationary landing gear tube, but these do not appear to actually secure the plate to anything.
Can anyone help?

[FB1965]

To much info for my pea brain, but if your saying you can't see where the drive attaches to the landing gear, I think that there is only two screws holding it in place.I believe the motor and gear slid over the shaft that is on the landing gear and there is a roll pin that slids into a slot.So the drive motor is fasten to the landing gear but not tight and there can be some movement but shouldn't be real floppy.

[PattonCE]

Thanks! I agree that there appears to be an ability for the gear reducer plate to rotate, but mine rotates back and forth quite a bit and makes a big "chunk-chunk-chunk" sound. I looked on the web for photos of landing gear parts and most look like mine with the gear plate with these little tabs. Need to do a little more research. Thanks again.

[Stan]

Just for info, my motor "flops" around as well. A discussion on this a long time ago found that this is pretty normal. As far as the clunking, I don't know. Mine makes a noise upon initial raising or lowering, but not any other time.

[Hamops]

The clunking sound that my landing gear makes occurs when it's at the ends of it's travel. I've never heard it clunking at any other time.Ifclunking is heard atpoints other than the travel ends them maybethe motor is runningthrough a tight spot or there is some excessive load beingput on the landing gear itself. Mylanding gearmotor also flops aboutlikethemounting bolts are loose. I've checked the bolts and they are all tight.

[Ridgeman]

I agree with Hampos. The clunking sound may be the clutch in the drive gearslipping. This usually only happens when you'rejacks are bottomed out or extended all the way out. But it can happen if there is too much load on the gear as when you try to lift your truck as well as yourtrailer. I had this happen too my rig when mypin was hanging up on my hitch and I was trying to lift the truck. It made more of what I would call a clicking or racheting sound.Tallked to the lifting gear mfg and he said that was normal and a safety feature but that I should avoid doing it as much as possible because that clutch will keep getting weaker to the point of not lifting the rig. I agree the motor moves around a lot and thatis normal.

[cruzr4-2]

We had the same type of issue with our landing gear. The plastic gear box cracked and the lugs that keep it from rotating were damaged. Replaced thegear box but problem persisted. Turned out the threaded rod inside the rt hand leg was binding in the threaded nut inside the leg.
Ours was an atwood unit and was a model that had been discontinued.
We ended up buying a complete landing gear assy less the motor because the acme thread on the rod of thecurrent model was different than what we had.
The gear box normally flops around some.