Monitor Panel on Winnebago

[dlboarman]

I am looking for ideas on the monitor panel of a Winnebago Journey DL 34 2001 model. There is a spring loaded rocker switch that allows you to check the charge on the house and chassis batteries. One switch, you just toggle it up or down for the appropriate battery. This might be very common on all motor homes or all Winnebago MH. Anyway, the house side shows a voltage which would appear to be correct since it is plugged into a 30 amp circuit… and charging. The voltage is 13.3. The chassis (or as I call them, the starting batteries) show nothing, just a blank. If I jumper from the house connection over to the chassis then the display shows the 13.3 volts as you would expect… this just shows me that the switch and display is working. Then I put a volt meter on the connection that (from the wiring diagram) is the chassis wire and I get only 10.19 volts. When I go outside and put the voltmeter across the chassis batteries I get 12.19 volts. I know the chassis batteries start the diesel up with no problem so I believe the 12+ volts are correct. It would appear that I am getting a voltage drop somewhere in the wiring. Now rather that spend a life time trying to find this, I was going to run a new wire from the chassis side somewhere and use it to monitor the chassis batteries. The wiring diagrams have not helped me find a logic (and hopefully close to the monitor panel) place to tie the wire in. Does anyone have experience with this? Most everything is in cable protectors. I am guessing I could pull it off a slide out motor (one is very close to where I need it). But maybe there is a better place. Again, any help would be great.

[dlboarman]

OK, here is what I did. I found that the chassis batteries drive the motors for the slides. In fact, when I checked the voltage of the starting batteries at the battery box, the voltage was the same as when measured at the slide motors. This was different than the house batteries. So, I connected (with a 2A fuse inline) a wire from that motor connection and ran it up into the underside of the vanity which is behind the monitor panel. This is the locations all the wires from the monitor panel come down to the floor and exit to the bottom of the motor home. If this is important to anyone, I can go into more detail. Anyway, at this point, I found the wire that was supposed to be carrying chassis voltage to the panel. I butt spliced in the new wire at this point and now everything works. Apparently the original wire had a break somewhere or something. The panel now shows the correct voltage for the chassis batteries and the house batteries are also correctly displayed. Done, got that off my list !!

[Jim_HiTek]

Often a problem like yours can be traced to a poor connection. Whenever I'm checking a wiring issue, I always tug a little on the connectors and inspect them visually. You'd be surprised how often the terminal comes off or was clamped on the insulation instead of the wire.