Shoddy workmanship with Coaxial Cable Wiring/Connectors

We just took delivery on a 2011 Landmark San Antonio.

I called the cable company because I could not get connected to the internet. I should note here that the Montana we traded for our Landmark last Tuesday, gave me Internet and Cable TV without problem.

The tech from Time Warner Cable was here for 3 hours, for what he said should have been a 15 min job. According to his equipment, the signal coming into my rig is 7db. When he checks at the connection above the living room tv, it is -32 (read, negative 32). At the jack in the bedroom, it is -23 db. We removed the amplifier plate from the bedroom closet wall and when he attempted to disconnect the coax from the amp, two of the heads came off in his hands. He replaced them.

He was doing signal tracing trying to find out which connections go where. They did not match the labels next to the connectors.

Has anyone every had their coach re-wired with coax? This is a mess!

thanks in advance.


I am a bit disappointed that a $100k+

TeleBack, It was a big problem for me as well. Cables didn't go were they where supposed to and almost every end was bad. I didn't completely rewire but with the help of a friend that does telephone work and had the meters we were able to fix the cable feeds to be used for everything. I can now use them for either cable or sat and internet. I think a rewire job would be difficult but I'm sure with enough effort it could be done. I was lucky, no cables were shorted. Just bad ends and routed wrong. We used the factory cable connection port to do this. One of these days we are going to work on the sat ports and see if we can fix those.

It is disapointing, especially when it should be such a simple procedure during the build process.

My cables were put together bad too. I had to go buy new ends and replace all of them, most fell off in my hand with a slight pull.

I found the same thing on our Landmark. I replaced the antenna head because we weren't getting a good signal to the TVs. After the replacement, we still had a bad signal. I replaced the coax connectors on two of the leads to the amplifier, as they were loose, like the ones the posters above found. The signal still was not there, so I dropped the antenna raise/rotate plate in the bedroom and found that two of the cables from the antenna did not even have connectors! After putting new connectors on the cables, all was well.

You may not need to rewire the coax in your rig, just get the connections fixed in the antenna junction under the raise/rotate plate. I agree, this should not have to be done. It speaks poorly of Heartland quality control.

Bill,

With all the problems you are having with a new Landmark, I would drag that POS back to the dealer and demand your hard earned money back. No questions asked just take it back. A $100K trailer or anything else costing this much should not have any problems. I've already seen your posts in here about if I remember correctly fresh water tank leaking, ice maker not hooked up and now all of the coax is crap, makes you want to scream, just take it back. Invoke the lemon law in Calif.

This seems to be an on-going issue with all models
Our Cyclone was also incorrectly labeled as well as 3 loose coax ends and 1 cable not even connected
Perhaps the pex crimpers brother is in charge of coax crimping!?

rebootsemi said:

Bill,

With all the problems you are having with a new Landmark, I would drag that POS back to the dealer and demand your hard earned money back. No questions asked just take it back. A $100K trailer or anything else costing this much should not have any problems. I've already seen your posts in here about if I remember correctly fresh water tank leaking, ice maker not hooked up and now all of the coax is crap, makes you want to scream, just take it back. Invoke the lemon law in Calif.

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Lemon Laws in most States only apply to motorized vehicles. Even then they don't just hand you back your money. First they have 3 chances to repair a specific problem properly. When it's all done if they do have to take it back it will be refunded minus a charge for the time/mileage you used it. Not as good a deal as it sounds...Don

My coax cable ends fell off in my hands too. Antennae works greatt but cable doesn`t.. Grrrrr. Takin my rig Back to Dealer..

I was trying to diagnose a crappy signal while we were at a campsite within eyesight of the TV transmitter we were receiving from. When I touched the cable from the wall outlet to the television, the cable fell off of the end connector while it was still screwed to the wall. When I went to disconnect it from the televison, the other end fell off. I went to the store and bought a short, 18" coax cable with pre-installed ends and it solved the problem.

While we don't have a $100K trailer, I would expect that at least the ends are crimped on to the cable when it came from the factory. Maybe Heartland could have "Bubba the QA/QC inspector" tug on the cables to see if they fall apart either before or after they are installed. Pleeease??

I reported this issue to Heartland almost a year ago. I offered to send pictures of the connectors, but no one seemed interested. This is totally unnecessary. While I don't really like the connectors Heartland uses, if properly terminated they would work just fine. I ended up going through and replacing all of the connectors with compression type connectors.

It is simply shoddy work and Heartlands needs to put a stop to it. It seems like such an easy fix!

The more time I spend on these forums, the more I realize that Heartland does not build a quality product at all, they have some good PR that monitors the forums and are sometimes willing to fix the errors they get called on. Why invest in skilled workers on the line or in the QC shop and spend on EVERY unit when one or two spokesman can fix the SMALL PERCENTAGE of problems that are escalated up to the manufacturer's level?

An update to my cable problems. You won't believe it! Well... maybe!

I decided to replace all the cable heads I could find until I got a good signal. When I got to the one in the basement, I noticed it had two strands of the dialectric wrapped around the conductor!!! Now, I can understand a couple of strands touching the conductor, but wrapped? One was wrapped around it clockwise, the other counterclockwise. Has a bit of a hint of sabotage to me!

I tried to take a picture of with with my phone but could focus close enough.

Anyway, once I replaced that cable head, all my cable problems went away!

I don't think you have been sabotaged. It likely got wrapped around the center conductor as the connector was tightened.

Would not say sabotage, just very poor workmanship, now try and make me believe that the TV coax wiring system was tested, Oh thats right tested just like the plumbing system. It would take probably a total of 10 minutes to hit the circuits with a signal generator to make sure that the circuits were connected correctly.

Sabotage is probably too strong of a word but when you see two single strands, one wrapped clockwise, and one wrapped counterclockwise, one begins to wonder.:angel:

I agree with all you other members. I just started on my winegard trav'ler install tonight. 3 hours of sorting out and making sense of the cables before I could even layout the roof top install.
I expected the cables to be mislabelled, they were. No big deal.
I did not expect them to be disconnected.
I had tone from the roof mounted sat wire to UDC, but no tone on any wire to rear ent centre. I ran the toner in high power mode and started tracing. An hour later and half the belly pan and spare tire carrier off, i found the sat line (white), not connected, for whatever reason it is not a continuous wire from UDC to rear ent centre. It was male to male connected, or at least ready to be connected. I located the other end, connected it and all was toning out fine.

It is hard to imagine the carelessness in build in terms of the coax wiring. I had a legend trailer before this and for all its faults (and inexpensive price) at least it was wired correctly.

Come on heartland, get your crap together. Wire these things properly.

1. Dual sat lines to roof pre wire area above bedroom speakers.
2. For God sakes, label them properly in the UDC
3. To each tv location run 2 white lines for sat and one black for cable tv ALL home run to an accessible location
4. Spend an extra $3 per unit (rg6 is $0.08 per foot)
5. Earn your reputation back for workmanship and attention to detail. (anyone ever take the panels off and look in the basement)? Shameful!
6. Use COMPRESSION fittings and proper tools so the coax ends don't come loose and fall off

Is this all too much to ask on a $70k trailer???

I'm sure glad I found this thread! We have a 2011 ElkRidge 27RLSS that we finally had the chance to use a cable hook up last week. Once hooked up we sat down to watch a ball game all we could see was static. I found the connection at the site box to be loose, which the Park Maintenance crew was quick to repair. Still nothing! I'll start chasing down the connections within the rig to find the problem.

This is a great site! Thanks for the education

MarkL said:

I'm sure glad I found this thread! We have a 2011 ElkRidge 27RLSS that we finally had the chance to use a cable hook up last week. Once hooked up we sat down to watch a ball game all we could see was static. I found the connection at the site box to be loose, which the Park Maintenance crew was quick to repair. Still nothing! I'll start chasing down the connections within the rig to find the problem.

This is a great site! Thanks for the education

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I Found my bad connection under the under belly protector on the living room tv side slide, start looking there. If you have or can get access to a wire toner, that will help you out immensely.

good luck!

Very interesting. I have had mine for 3 years and never happy with it and to top it off the sound system has never worked properly and it just sits there collecting dust because of the stupid automotive aerial and extremely poor workmanship. I am not surprised by the wiring because I have seen the basement, although it must be said that most manufacturers are the same.

BC1of38 said:

An hour later and half the belly pan and spare tire carrier off, i found the sat line (white), not connected, for whatever reason it is not a continuous wire from UDC to rear ent centre. It was male to male connected, or at least ready to be connected. I located the other end, connected it and all was toning out fine.

6. Use COMPRESSION fittings and proper tools so the coax ends don't come loose and fall off

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I saw this as well on my trailer, and as much as I can figure the slide is pre-made and wired and "connected up" to the main trailer somewhere in the assembly process.

The compression fittings are easier to install (IMHO) and provide a substantial mechanical connection over the crimped - both secure and weatherproof.

One of the problems of Coax is the copper centre will oxidize (turn black) and interfere with signal strength if it is not weather tight. One of the best reasons to make sure the connections are "wrench tight" not just finger tight.

Take care,
Brian