HI,
I have 2 units Ultimaker 3 Ext exactly with same problem, been leveleng them manually for some time already, both have wire broken with little use. This is a serious design fault !
I must say that 1 unit long time ago went to reseller (and after many days without it impacting our production)...returned exactly as it was sent.... they told s that there it was working fine... but here continued to to level automatically, only manual.
very sad !