New to all of this and completely clueless

Hello! We recently purchased a 2008 Sundance from an RV show. We are being military transferred across country and I thought what a great time it is to buy one. No trying to find dog friendly hotels.

Well we are finding we don't know anything and don't know where to turn to get help. Like I said we bought from an out of state dealer at the show.

We have it parked in storage right now and check on it every weekend. Every time we go we find something else we can't figure out. Mostly its with the powering of it. Seems like we always have a hard time getting it to get juice from our truck. If we charge it up, shouldn't it stayed charged? We are leaving from the desert to the east in 2 weeks and I'm worried about taking it across country and freezing every night cause the battery is dead.

Any help or tips or where can I go for videos on how to even work this thing!

Thanks!

Hi gmauro,

Welcome to the Heartland Owners Forum and to the family. We have a great bunch of folks here with lots of information and all willing to share their knowledge when needed.

I'm sure our other members will be jumping in with some good info for you soon. You have lots of little parasite loads on the battery and also when towing hooked to truck it will probably not charge the battery enough to use the heat system overnight.

Be sure and check out our Heartland Owners Club. Join us at a rally when you can and meet lots of the great folks here and make friends for a lifetime.

Enjoy the forum.

Jim M

Hi gmauro,

The battery should be getting charged by the Power Converter when the rig is plugged into shore power. If not plugged into shore power, the battery will run down after a while due to small parasitic loads that are always drawing power unless you have a battery cutoff switch set OFF while in storage. How long it takes to draw down the battery varies. If you have the appliances all shut off, and you've got a good, fairly new battery, you may get a few weeks.

If your tow vehicle is supplying power to the trailer connector (you might need to install a fuse), you'll get a slow charge but if the battery is depleted, it won't get a full charge while towing during the day. You need to be plugged into shore power.

If your battery is not getting charged while on shore power, you could have a tripped 12V DC mini-circuit breaker. There's a row of 12V breakers near the battery, probably covered by a red rubber boot. One breaker has a teeny-tiny reset button that's very hard to see.

Our owner-written 12V Block Diagram and Diagnostic guide might be helpful to you. It's in this folder.

We also have a number of owner-written user guides. If you'll be staying in cold climates, you should check out the Water Systems Winter Usage Guide.

Your best bet would be to get someone local to help you. For example go to a local dealership and ask who does their walk through's. They usually pay retired folks to walk new owners through their rig. Maybe if you got a name you could hire one for a few hours personally or through the dealership.

Or or pull the rig to some local park and start asking questions of anyone you see. Generally most there were in your shoes a few years back and someone helped them.

People on this forum are very helpful but if you are starting from scratch that's a lot of writing back and forth.

First thing to do is to get that battery checked . . .

Might be time for a new one!

Take it to an auto parts store (AutoZone, Advanced Auto, O'Reilly's, NAPA) . . . they can tell you if it is still good or not.

Also, check the battery fluid.