ATF: MPG - 12 volt breaker in MPG?

crennpage

Member
The slideout kitchen dome light in my MPG 183 no longer works. It appears that not enough power is being delivered to the lights (I've checked them and they work fine in other fixtures). From reading the electrical thread on this forum it may be that there exists a 12 volt breaker that needs to be reset. BTW, all the fuses in the TT's fuse box are fine, no red lights and I've even pulled the light fuse and inspected it visually ... it's fine.

I've checked behind the battery to where the battery leads attached to the trailer to see if there was a breaker reset button there but to no avail. There's no button as in the larger Heartland TTs. Can you help?
 

crennpage

Member
I also completely removed dome light fixture and hooked it directly up to the battery to check to see if that was the problem and it works fine that way. When I reinstalled it in the kitchen I'm back to the same ole problem. I've checked the voltage feeding the light fixture and it runs about 12.4 -12.5 volts when the MPG is connected directly to shore power. When on battery only power I'm getting readings of around 11.8 volts.
 

branson4020

Icantre Member
When you say "not enough power" do you mean the light is dim? Or, do you mean that there is no voltage at the fixture?
 

crennpage

Member
When you say "not enough power" do you mean the light is dim? Or, do you mean that there is no voltage at the fixture?

When I tested the dome wires with the meter it was showing voltage, albeit somewhat lower than what I would have expected (see the values I mentioned above). Anyway, I was looking through some of the other threads on electrical problems and came across this one from Bill in Ontario:

"Maybe others have noticed this, but in the course of troubleshooting a blown water pump fuse, I noticed that the failed fuse indicating lamps do not always illuminate. They rely on there being a complete circuit being made. In my case I had turned the water pump off and with a blown pump fuse, the LED was not on. Make the circuit by turning the pump on and the LED works. Also these is obviously some current required to drive the LED, and in my case, it was enough to illuminate the water pump switch and cause a temporary illumination of the test panel lights when the test button was pressed."

Well, after thinking that over for a little I realized that when I switched the light on I wasn't looking at the fuse box. I only looked at it when the light switch was off (or when the dome light fixture was completely disconnected). I went back later this afternoon and hooked up the light again and turned on the switch and specifically looked at the fuse box and low and behold, a little red light came on. :) The kitchen dome light is not on the fusebox light circuit, it's on the slide circuit. Problem solved with a brand new 15 amp fuse! Thank you Bill in Ontario with the Landmark RV!

These Heartland forums are great places to do troubleshooting research for one's rig, although I can see I need to figure out how to use the site's search engine a little more efficiently.
 
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