An RV theater seat is motion furniture, not coach equipment. The assembly is a steel mechanism base bolted under the seat cushion, a linear actuator that drives the footrest, a control box, a switch or cupholder controller, and a power supply. The power supply is where most owners guess wrong. Lippert's theater seating service manual, CCD-0004376, has the technician unplug the seat from its power source and disconnect an AC/DC power adapter wire, which means the seat is normally fed from a 120-volt receptacle behind or beneath it rather than from the coach 12-volt bus. Downstream of that adapter the circuit is low voltage. Okin lists 24 to 29 volts DC for its JLDQ.14B seating actuator, and furniture drives of that class sit in the same band. So the practical question on a dead seat is not whether the house batteries are charged. It is whether that receptacle is live and the adapter is still putting out DC.
Owners rarely describe a part. The call is nearly always one of three sentences: one seat will not lay back, the footrest goes halfway and stops, or the switch clicks and nothing moves. Elimination runs from the wall to the motor. Confirm the receptacle or 12-volt feed is live, read DC at the adapter with a multimeter, then the control box main power plug and quick disconnect, then the harness. Lippert's TI-306 sheet labels those harness legs by color: a red and black male lead for seat heat, a red and black female pair for the LED lights, and green and black plus gray and black for massage. Only then is the actuator fed directly to see whether it runs. Swapping the controller with the seat beside it costs nothing and settles the switch question. Our service call covers the trip out and the first hour on site at the rate in the pricing table on this page; anything past that first hour is quoted and approved before we carry on.
The harness lives in the one place on the seat that moves. It is routed along the edge of the frame and across the mechanism base, exactly where the footrest linkage scissors open and closed and where the seat gets shoved back against the wall to clear a slide. Lippert treats this as a named risk rather than an afterthought. The last step of the TI-310 actuator procedure is to zip tie the wires together to prevent damage when the footrest is extended or retracted, and TI-306 has the technician cut the straps, then re-strap and staple the harness before the chair goes back over. The symptom pattern is distinctive. A seat that works intermittently, dies in one specific position, or takes out a control box twice is telling you the insulation has chafed against steel. Left alone, a chafed lead becomes a dead short, and a footrest stuck extended becomes a bent frame on the next travel day.
This is the fact that changes both the bill and the wait. Lippert's QR-082 reference guide identifies the seating actuators by part number: 733843 for the eMoMo actuator used by Crossroads, Heartland and Keystone, 642438 for the Thomas Payne power recliner actuator which can substitute for 733843, 664825 for the piston-operated XLR version, and 665086 for the Montana unit, whose two-wire second version is 799772. Those are catalog furniture drives rather than coach-specific assemblies. Okin's technical data for the JLDQ.14B lists 3000 N push force, 1000 N pull, a 20 mm to 400 mm stroke range, 42 mm per second maximum speed and a one-in-eight-minute duty cycle. What makes one fit is stroke and mounting pattern, not the badge on the coach. TI-310 documents two versions, one bolted with 8 mm hex and 11 mm hardware and one on 5 mm self-tapping bolts with 14 mm heads, and confirms Version Two will replace Version One.
Lippert's Furniture OEM Installation Manual instructs the builder to mount furniture securely to floor or walls. A theater seat that rocks on its base is not a comfort complaint, it is unsecured mass in a moving vehicle, and the fix is re-anchoring, not shimming. In most coaches that anchor lands on a slide-out floor, which is why a musty seat base is a symptom and not a cause. Wet or spongy decking under the seat points at the slide floor and its seals, so the seat gets diagnosed alongside slide floor rot rather than instead of it. Okin rates the JLDQ.14B for 30 to 75 percent relative humidity at protection degree IP20, meaning no moisture protection at all, and a Florida coach spends months above that band while UV works on the fabric and sealants. One plain limit: Apex does not re-cover cushions or do cut-and-sew upholstery. We repair mechanisms, actuators, harnesses and control boxes, and refer trim work out.
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Call 888-759-1438Because each seat carries its own controller, actuator and often its own AC/DC power adapter, while the pair frequently shares one receptacle. The fastest test is a swap: move the working seat's cupholder controller or wand onto the dead seat. If the dead seat then moves, the fault is the switch. If it still does nothing, the problem sits upstream in the adapter, the control box or the harness.
Usually both, in series. Lippert's service manual has the technician unplug the seat from a receptacle and disconnect an AC/DC power adapter, so the seat draws from 120-volt shore or inverter power and the adapter drops it to a low-voltage DC feed, and Okin lists 24 to 29 volts DC for the JLDQ.14B furniture actuator. A seat that dies the moment you leave shore power is an inverter question, not a seat fault.
Sometimes, and the part numbers are public. Lippert's QR-082 lists 733843, 642438, 664825, 665086 and 799772, and notes that 642438 can substitute for 733843. The trap is the mount, not the motor: TI-310 documents two different mounting versions, one on 8 mm hex bolts and one on 5 mm self-tapping bolts, so a correct part number with the wrong bracket pattern will not go in.
Our service call covers the trip out and the first hour on site at the rate in the pricing table on this page; anything past that first hour is quoted and approved before we carry on. An actuator or controller swap is normally a single-visit job. A full mechanism base replacement takes longer, because the back cushion, the LED light and the footrest kick plate bolts all come apart first.
Not necessarily. Lippert's manual draws a clear line: if the footrest opens but will not close, the frame is out of square, and a washer shimmed between the front of the frame and the side piece behind the footpad often squares it up. If the footrest will not open at all, the frame is bent and the seat has to be replaced. That distinction is worth checking before anyone quotes a whole new seat.
The foam is usually the victim rather than the source. Theater seats are commonly anchored to a slide-out floor, so a slide that leaks at its seals or wipers wets the decking first and the seat base second. Treating it as an upholstery problem means the smell comes back. The seat base gets moisture-mapped, and if the decking reads wet then the slide floor is the actual repair.
Every figure on this page comes from a manufacturer document or a standards body, not from another repair site. Here is where each one comes from.
| Item | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Service call | $299 | Includes the trip out to your RV and the first hour on site |
| Work past the first hour | Quoted after diagnosis | We tell you what it will take before we carry on |
| Parts | Quoted per job | Special-order parts may need a deposit before we order them |
| Written estimate | No charge | You approve the estimate before any work starts |
The service call covers the trip out to your RV and the first hour on site. Anything beyond that depends on what we find, and we quote it and get your approval before carrying on.
The price ranges on this page come from our own recent jobs across Florida, not from an industry average. What you pay depends on the rig, the parts it needs and what we find on site, so we give you a written estimate before any work begins and you approve it first.