Hydraulic ice castle help

Alot of good mechanics on this site,…

I bought an used 2016 ice castle 8×17 with a hydraulic lift. Once home, I lowered it forgetting the tongue pin. Raised it a little and pulled the pin and it went down nicely. Boy is this nice! House was a little un level on my blocks so I tried to lift it and nothing but motor noise on the lift pump. No lifting. Not so nice,…ugh. Battery tests fine. Hydraulic oil a little low barely off the stick. I ordered some to fill. Could that be it? Seems like something more is wrong. Owners manual useless. Seller hasn’t used it for better than a year and it worked then. Any one had issues with the lift pumps? Any suggestions? Anyone with a tech contact at ice castle? Thanks a bunch.

Sounds like the valve is open. Try switching it back and forth a couple times. Pretty simple systems, pressure pumps the cylinders up, a valve opens and it floats down, pretty much like a floor jack.

Call the guy you bought it from and ask him if he experienced the issue before

Don’t they just use ATF in the pumps?

They may use ATF and if that is what it has I would change it out to 5606. 5606 is an aircraft grade hyd. Oil made for colder temps, that is what most snow plow guys run in their systems, and it doesn’t cost much more than ATF.

Good day. I wrestled off the jack knife sofa so that I could access the pump to pull out the valves. I noticed a loose wire with a clip off one of the valves. Plugged it in and it worked! Simple fix but was out of site looking in from under the sofa. Berkon the frame company was not very helpful. Hard to reach and then never returned calls after promising to check with the “guys”. Something to keep “under ur hat” if you own a hydraulic lift house.

captddh wrote:

Berkon the frame company was not very helpful. Hard to reach and then never returned calls after promising to check with the “guys”.

Honest question. What did you want them to do? Come out and fix it? How could you fix this on the phone?