Battery connections on Vectra 40AD

[Big Bear]

I have been working to "clean up" the connections to the CHASSIS battery's. Some of the cables to those to battery's installed by Freightliner, and added to by Winnebago are a MYSTERY. I have both the Freightliner & Winnebago diagrams AND have called them both, but still have questions. There are 2 ea 3/0 positive and 2 ea 3/0 Neg cables. Speaking only of the POSITIVE cables I have found the following; 1 3/0 goes to the starter solenoid, the other goes to an connection point adjacent to the battery tray where Winnebago connects to it. Freightlner says they only make 3 (pos) connections to the battery, one to the starter, one multi conductor cable which is for the 5 fuses hidden under everything else (these are for the ECM), and another possibly #2awg marked "batt to CB" a 110A circuit breaker, this is the feed to the air intake grid heaters. There are also a few other 16/14 awg wires to the POS side. There is a 2nd cable, the same size as the batt to CB cable that I cannot trace down. Neither Winn or FL seem to claim it. Some of these wiring drawings are misleading, I see a wire to the Chassis batt marked on the Winn Drawing as "temp sens" but no such wire on the MH. After another talk with Winn found that depending on which inverter/charger you had determined if it was there. MY QUESTION now, what is the 2nd large (possibly #2awg) cable used for??

[Big Bear]

I have been working to "clean up" the connections to the CHASSIS battery's. Some of the cables to those to battery's installed by Freightliner, and added to by Winnebago are a MYSTERY. I have both the Freightliner & Winnebago diagrams AND have called them both, but still have questions. There are 2 ea 3/0 positive and 2 ea 3/0 Neg cables. Speaking only of the POSITIVE cables I have found the following; 1 3/0 goes to the starter solenoid, the other goes to an connection point adjacent to the battery tray where Winnebago connects to it. Freightlner says they only make 3 (pos) connections to the battery, one to the starter, one multi conductor cable which is for the 5 fuses hidden under everything else (these are for the ECM), and another possibly #2awg marked "batt to CB" a 110A circuit breaker, this is the feed to the air intake grid heaters. There are also a few other 16/14 awg wires to the POS side. There is a 2nd cable, the same size as the batt to CB cable that I cannot trace down. Neither Winn or FL seem to claim it. Some of these wiring drawings are misleading, I see a wire to the Chassis batt marked on the Winn Drawing as "temp sens" but no such wire on the MH. After another talk with Winn found that depending on which inverter/charger you had determined if it was there. MY QUESTION now, what is the 2nd large (possibly #2awg) cable used for??

[MrTransistor]

Hi Vern,

From your post, I assume you figured out what he 3/0 wire to the post is. It should be going to the battery tie solenoid. As for the #2, could it be power to the Allison transmission?

[Big Bear]

Yes, pretty much figured everything EXCEPT the 2nd large wire (not 3/0) the one that is the same size as going to circuit breaker for air intake grid heater. Neither Winn or FL can help me with that. It is routed along with anumber of other cables toward the front end, but cannot follow it more then about 3 ft. Tried measuring (elect) between the cable & various connections in the front elect compartment w/no luck. The reason for all this is to allow axcess to the battery's for service. When I changed batterys I did not replace with sealed units. A previous post by someone with a different model Winn got me started. I have less room next to the battery tray, So did a little different. Used 2 buss bars + & -, and moved all to them EXCEPT the 2- & 2+ 3/0 cables and te 2 2AWG? cables and added a - & + cable from the batts to them. Also cleane up the COACH batterys, replacing the 3 12v units with 4 Trojan T105's.

[Harry B]

What seems to be missing from your list is the cable running to the front electrical compartment (underneath driver's seat) powering headlights, fog lights, running lights, dash, etc. Should be 2/0 cable.

I have not altered the chassis battery hookup (I did replace those batteries) however I also installed 4x 6 volt batteries as replacement for the 3x 12 volt house batteries and installed a Xantrex Link20 to monitor battery usage. This required me to rewire all the cabling on house side.