House Battery Wiring Diagram

[ScottSpivey]

I have a 98 Pace Arrow Vision on a Ford Chassis. Several months ago, I removed the 6-volt house batteries to perform overall clean-up / maintenance and to fully recharge the batteries. When hooking up the cables back to the batteries, there were 2 additional small gauge wires that I placed onto the negative battery post (thinking that is where they came from).

From what I can tell, the batteries are working fine but the display panel built into the range hood does not display any level for the batteries. Fleetwood customer service explained how to test the levels on the house batteries by diconnecting from shore power, placing a load on the batteries (turn on a few lights) and then checking the levels using the control panel. Still nothing?

Can someone confirm that I hooked-up the 2 "small" wires to the proper battery post? And are they related to the display panel problems?

Thanks!!!!

[Gary RVRoamer]

There is no chance that the small wires went to the negative terminall - that is battery ground and goes direct to the chassis. There would be no need to run a wire all the way to the battery to get a ground - the nearest chassis ground point would be used. Hook those wires to the positive post and all will be well.

[wa8yxm]

Actually there is a chance ONE of those small wires goes to ground.

I have two suggestions.. The first is figuring out where the wires go

Remove the wires from the negative terminal. Get a 12 volt light. I got a license plate lamp socket (This is a rubber/plastic blade type socket with leads) and matching lamp at an auto-parts place.. I then put a clip on one lead and extended the other lead to a probe.

now, hook the clip to the positive terminal on the battery and "probe" First to the negative terminal of the battery .. LIGHT.. good, it works.

now touch one of the suspect wires (Have your partner inside the rig) no light.. OK, turn on the battery tester.. Light comes on dim and/or panel lights up.. HOOK IT TO POSITIVE

No light.... It gets a bit more complex.

The other wire may be a ground.. Or it might be the steps, or the propane detector or the charger line or.. Well you get the idea.

Test it the same way

now part two

When you finally get it hooked up properly.. Get a can of red spray paint, or a bottle of red paint or nail polish (Model paint will do) and paint all the wires on teh POSITIVE end of the battery

Optional.. Use black on the negative wire

Overspary onto the battery or down the cable is really a good thing

DO THIS WITH THE WIRES HOOKED UP

[ScottSpivey]

I placed a digitial multi-meter onto the wires to determine pos/neg leads (multi-meter displayed pos or neg reading based upon which wire was connected to which clip on multi-meter). Had helper toggle switch on monitoring panel and noticed slight fluctuation in the reading. Concluded, that wires do lead to monitoring panel and which wire was negative and which was positive. Or so I thought, until I placed the positive wire (???) to the positive post on the battery and got huge sparks. So I quickly removed the wire and placed everything back to original position.

I have only a basic understanding, so I may have misunderstood what the multi-meter was telling me. My assumption was that when the meter was displaying positive reading, the wire attached to positive clip should be attached to positive post on battery and that the wire attached to negative clip should be attached to negative post on battery.

I can't remember if I tested the wires independently against a grounding point.

YES, once I get this figured out I will put something on the wires to indicate whether negative or positive connections. and probably take pictures for the next time I remove/replace the batteries.

Thanks.

[Paul and Sue]

Hi,
I had a 1999 Pace Arrow on a Ford before the one I have now. When I had replaced the house batteries on the 1999 Pace Arrow, there where NOT any extra wires going to the house batteries, just the main battery cables. If someone owned the rig before you, maybe they went to the batteries for power to operate something they had added??????
I would disconnect the small wires and see what works and/or not work.
Good Luck

[ScottSpivey]

I do have a solar panel charger atop the front a/c unit, but I have no clue where/how that hooks into the system. I expect that its a factory-installed feature.

I'll be back home this weekend and can go over some of the suggestions provided so far. Thanks for the valuable input to-date on this topic.