In this video, I'm going to show you step by step how to unhitch and set up your travel trailer or
RV camper once you get to your campsite because if I can do it you can do it too. Hi weekend
warrior family or if you're new here I'm Randi and every Thursday I help us make big memories
in small campers and say it with me because weekends are just too short. I wanted to learn
how to set up our travel trailer so I could do it myself and as my husband, Tom was teaching me how
I created a step-by-step checklist that I rely on so I don't miss a step. And this makes the
process really easy. And you should have a checklist too. So stay till the end because
at the end of this video I'm gonna tell you where you can go to get my checklist.
Step #1. You need to get out and view the campsite before you back your trailer in.
This is important. You want to find the most level spot you can and also make sure that there
are no obstacles in the way. Step #2. We need to level the RV or make sure that it's level
and if not use levelers as needed. In this step, we are only concerned with leveling your trailer
side to side. To do this place a level on the floor inside your trailer and if the bubble is not
between the two center lines you are not level. I see I need to raise the driver's side of the
trailer to get the bubble centered. And to do this we need to place levelers underneath the wheel.
My husband made ours by cutting an angled edge on a 4x4 piece of wood so the tow vehicle tires
can easily drive up on top of the wood. You can also buy levelers such as these popular heavy-duty
ones on Amazon. I'll leave information for these and any other travel trailer setup necessities
in the video description below. With your leveler in place slowly back up your travel trailer until
the wheel is on top of the leveler. Now we need to recheck to see if this got us level and in
this case it didn't so let's add another piece of wood to give it some more height.
That did it. We are now level side to side. Step #3. You want to make sure that your
hookups will reach the hook-up pedestal. So if you have electric hookups for instance
you want to make sure your cord is going to be long enough. It's important to do this
before you unhitch because you don't want to disconnect and unhitch your travel trailer
and realize that your cords aren't long enough to reach. Also if you have slide-outs or awnings
make sure there's enough room to open them. Step #4 on the checklist is we need to chock
the wheels. This simply means that you place wedged wheel chocks under the wheel and this
is an important safety measure because they will prevent your RV from rolling away.
In the next steps we're going to begin to disconnect the trailer from the tow vehicle
beginning with step #5. Place a jack block under the jack. This provides support for the jack
and so your jack doesn't need to extend down so far. I'm using a 2X8 piece of wood or you
can also buy one on Amazon. In step #6 we're going to remove our weight distribution bars.
A tip to make this easier is to raise the tongue jack because this takes pressure off of the bars.
I recently installed the Eaz Lift Recurve R3 weight distribution hitch with sway control
because it's easy for me to hitch up and unhitch. I have an upcoming video showing
you how I installed it and more about this weight distribution system so stay tuned for this video.
Step #7. We're gonna lower the jack so we can take pressure off the hitch.
Step #8. We need to take off the chains that are connected to the tow vehicle.
Step #9. Disconnect the 7-way power cord from the tow vehicle.
Step #10. We need to disconnect the brake control from the tow vehicle.
We keep the brake control wire secured with the safety pin
so I need to remove that and then I latch the pin to the chain so I don't lose it.
In step #11 we need to open the ball coupler. And we do this by pulling up and back on the latch.
In step #12 we are going to raise the tongue jack until we lift the ball coupler off the ball hitch.
Step #13. We need to move our tow vehicle out of the way.
Step #14. We need to level the trailer from front to back. Again we'll use a level to
determine if we need to raise or if we need to lower the front of the trailer to make it level.
And I can see we need to lower the front so I'll do this by lowering the jack.
And when I recheck the level I can see it's not quite low enough yet.
Perfect, the bubble is now centered so we're level front to back. Step #15. Before we can
put the stabilizers down we need to put leveling blocks under each stabilizer to help support
them. These ones are stackable. And it's best to use two or three to provide more support.
Next, we need to lower the stabilizers. And you can use a manual crank like this or a power drill.
And of course, this step goes much faster when you use a power drill.
As promised I want to share my step-by-step travel trailer RV camper setup checklist with you.
I rely on this checklist all the time so I don't ever miss a step. To get your free copy go to
RandisAdventures.com/unhitch and I will also leave all this information in the video description
below. Well, that's it for this episode and I can't wait to see you next Thursday when I
show you step by step how to hitch up your travel trailer to your tow vehicle. I'll see you then.