Voltage Drop at Awning Motor

[Hansville]

Problem still not solved and looking for experts willing to help. Have a carefree of Colorado Eclipse patio awning with a single control switch and have done the following, replaced old motor with a new one, fully charged the chassis battery to 13.7 volts. Voltage at the motor is about 6 volts and not enough to pull the awning in. I used the car battery to verify that the new motor is good and working. It appears to be an internal wiring issue and that is where I am right now. If this has happened to you please let me know how it was resolved. Thanks for the help.

[Rex]

Have you cleaned the connection where it come into the coach from outside? That was my problem. It is a seal plug but the back end is only sealed with caulk. If that leaks you get water in the connection and then corrosion. It is a twist lock plug.

[ImagineIF]

Ditto on checking the connector going through the coach wall, if you have one. There are only 2 other potential problem areas. The controller or nearly broken wire. While you have the connector disconnected outside the coach, check the voltage on the pins facing the coach. If the voltage is low here, you likely have a bad controller. If it's good here, check the resistance, ohms, between one pin of the connector facing the motor and one lead at the motor. It should be near 0 ohms. Check the other lead between the motor and connector, it too should be near zero. If either is not near zero the problem is the connection to the pin on the connector or the wire has been pinched in the awning arm to the point of being nearly broken.

If these all check good, then the problem only occurs under load. The easiest thing to rule out first is the controller. Simply bypass the controller by taking input voltage to the controller and temporarily connecting it directly to the output to the awning. If the voltage is low it's the controller or wiring to the controller. You can rule out the wiring to the controller by using the same known good voltage source you used when you connected directly to the motor. The next thing is to look for a pinched wire in the awning arm. Bypassing just the connector on the wall of the coach is all but impossible without replacing it, so hopefully its the controller or pinched wire. BTW, I eliminated the connection at the motor because you just put a new one on.

BTW, I had a similar problem that turned out to be the contoller. It would go out but not back in.

Best of luck,

[Hansville]

Thanks guys, that was the exact problem area. It was just a loose connection found when I pulled the plug in unit out of the body of the motor home. Pushed the wire back on and it works perfectly.