One of this weeks tasks was troubleshooting a non working electric step. When the appointment was first made, I thought “No Problem”, as Kwikee steps are pretty easy to troubleshoot and repair.

But… when the coach arrived, I discovered that the step is a B & L electric step- no longer in business.

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UPDATED…

Unfortunately, it looks like the Kincor kit I mention below is no longer available- Kwikee changed the motor enough that it is not possible to take it apart- the unit is not sealed.

An alternate repair method using an Auto Parts store motor is discussed in this RV.NET forum posting.

Original post below——————————–

Electric steps are one of those luxuries that are a near necessity- in a Motor Home, you often need a step to enter, and yet once you are in, you cannot push a manual step in, and when you are in the rig, pulling the step out is impossible.

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I work on a lot of RV refrigerators. A “not insignificant” portion of those have cooling units which have gone bad (see my webpage on absorption refrigerators) .

For nearly 10 years, I have been using, with very good results, remanufactured cooling units from Midwest Products, of Corning Iowa. Midwest had been rebuilding cooling units for nearly 20 years, they did a great job, produced a quality product, and were generally good people to deal with.

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In the auto industry, there are many, many companies producing aftermarket parts- you simply have to check out the nearest auto parts store to see that.

Many of these parts are of a great quality- designed to remedy the short comings of the stock parts and provide superior performance and longevity. On the other hand, many are…. to put it mildly… junk. Aftermarket parts are often called “will fit”, because they will fit (but whether they will last, or do what they are supposed to do…)

In the Recreation Vehicle industry, by and large, the market simply isn’t there for a wide variety of aftermarket parts- after all, even to build a cheap part takes a large investment in design and tooling.
But… there are a few notable exceptions, and because of market forces, they generally fall in to the superior category. Two manufacturers I can highly recommend are Dinosaur Electronics and Flight Systems.

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