Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Out there, somewhere
Posts: 9,900
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Scott,
Another Scott here. If I may, I'd like to issue you a word of caution here. I'm a retired fireman and, I had an overtime assignment for years, outfitting brand new fire trucks, in prep for service. And in those years, we used MILES of UHMW (Ultra High Molecular Weight) plastic for many, many shelves, brackets, braces, guides and more in the compartments of our trucks. Without a doubt, it's a seriously tough product. We later changed to HDPE. (High Density Poly Ethylene) due to the fact that the cost of UHMW was twice as high as HDPE but, HDPE would do just fine for our application. HDPE is what almost 100% of your cutting boards are made of.
Now, what I was going to caution you about is, be very, very careful when using that UHMW in relation to SLOPE!!!!! UHMW is by nature, very, very slippery with GREAT properties for very low friction. That's a primary reason NASA and other high end industry use it. But, that low friction, in the case of your application, COULD cause a serious problem.
And that is, if your whole camp/RV site is unlevel, it is highly possible all four of your jacks could SLIDE at the same time to the low side. Now, just how much slope or, degree of slope would you need for this to happen, well, that's hard to tell. Once a mass of weight begins to slide, due to low friction, that degree of slope might be very slight.
We, on the FD were also offered UHMW and other high impact plastics for the stabilizer pads for our aerial ladder trucks. We tested quite a few. And we tested on flat ground and varying slopes. The landing pads that were attached to each outrigger were pivotal in both directions so, they would adapt to uneven surfaces, based on pads that were placed below them.
But, on even a few degree slope, we found our aerial trucks actually slide sideways or, whatever the direction of the slope was, once the tires lost contact with the ground. And that was a major key. Now, about 99.999999% of us that use jacks are smart enough to not raise the rigs off the ground enough to have all 6 or even 8 tires off the ground so, that's a given with us.
But, my point is, just be careful and cognizant of the reduced friction of those new pads. Good luck and have fun.
Scott
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2004 ITASCA HORIZON 36GD, 2011 GMC Sierra 1500 4x4 Toad '20 Honda NC750X DCT
Retired-29.5 yrs, SDFD, Ham - KI6OND
Me, Karla and the Heidi character, (mini Schnauzer)!
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