A Trouble Shooting Dilemma

Hammerdown · 06-16-2010, 02:08 PM

I have to give some background and then to the problem. On our last trip last October we had stopped mid afternoon and when ready to move on, it would not start. We ended up being towed 80 miles to an over-the-road truck repair facility. They had minor experience with motorhomes. Their technician started probing everything electrical looking for the problem. I had to stop him as he was checking out the battery switching controller (I don't know its correct name), he had no idea what he was doing but I think he probed every wire, fuse and connector he could find. Strangely though he did find the problem, a bad neutral safety switch. Since this was on a late Friday afternoon we couldn't get a replacement so he jumpered around it and the motorhome would start again. Now for the dilemma, when we were getting ready to be towed, I had to go inside and retract the steps. After the probing at the repair facility, the steps don't work anymore. The circulating fans at the corners of the windshield do not work anymore and the radio does not work anymore. I didn't want them to start another round of probing for fear of them shutting something else down.

After we returned from the trip I checked every fuse I could locate and all checked okay. I started to trace the power wire to the steps and the hot red wire goes into a wire loom with five other hot red wires, about impossible to trace.

Does anyone have any clues as to what I should be looking for? We have about five weeks before our next planned trip and it would be nice if at least the steps worked again.

Any suggestions accepted!

Thanks,
Dick

RVThere · 06-16-2010, 02:28 PM

We had a case where the radio did not work after a service call. As with you, all the fuses and push button circuit breakers visually checked out.

The problem was the back of the push button circuit breakers. While they were fixing other things, they had the circuit breaker panel off and pulled the wire off the back of the radio circuit breaker. Once we put a new crimp connector on, all was fine.

So check the backs of the push buttons and make sure nothing got yanked off.

Jeff H · 06-16-2010, 07:25 PM

ignition switch

Hammerdown · 06-17-2010, 04:35 AM

I have electrically checked all the fuses since the problem. Before we left on the trip the ignition switch was new and I had put in the Workhorse fix of adding the relays to take the extra load off of the ignition switch.

Please keep the ideas coming!

Dick