SOLVED: Electrical Gremlins are back

Happy New Year Everyone.

My wife and I just rolled in to Deming New Mexico where we will be spending the next month or so before heading to our property up by Kingman Arizona. As I was raising the trailer with the landing jacks so I could unhook the trailer the jacks quit running. I had just gotten it high enough to unhook but had to hand crank it down to level for the first time in my 20 years of fifth wheeling.

I assumed that it probably had a inline breaker like the slides do but it didn't reset like the slide one does if it's real cold out and it trips the breaker. I have some time to figure this out but am looking for ideas on what to look for before I start digging into it. I brought my Fluke meter with me so I can check voltages. Are there any obvious things that I should check first?

This is on a model 3055 fifth wheel.

Thanks,
Brian

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

Hi Bib-B,

I'm guessing you have electric landing gear and perhaps the in-line fuse is blown.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

Batteries? Cold weather will kill batteries and if they are weak, well the obvious happens.

I had that happen and the trailer moved up about six inches and stopped. When batteries go in our weather there is no jumping them. They are gone and have to be replaced.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

If you have the older Venture electric front jacks, you will not find an inline fuse. I replaced mine years ago with the original Ground Control system and found no such animal. You may find one of the little breakers under the rubber cover has a tiny reset button on the side that you may need to press. If your onboard battery is weak, it will pop it. Try connecting your cord back to the truck (running) to operate the jacks.

I found when leaving my rig at the dealer for service that the battery would die due to the parasitic draws (didn't have a shut-off switch then) and to operate the jacks I had to connect to the truck when I picked up the rig. The dealer used a forklift to move the rig after I left it, so it didn't matter to them if the jacks worked or not.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

Were you plugged into shore power at the time that the landing gear quit? Have you tried the gear again after the batteries have had a night on the charger, and time for the thermal reset circuit breaker to cool and reset?

Do you have electric gearmotor or hydraulic level up landing gear? We need to know that to give you the right info.

If hydraulic, some recent posters have found loose electrical connection nuts on the pump motor.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

danemayer said:

Hi Bib-B,

I'm guessing you have electric landing gear and perhaps the in-line fuse is blown.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll take a look and see if I can find an in line fuse. It's only 27 degrees out right now so I may way wait for a little warmer weather to check it.

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Lynn1130 said:

Batteries? Cold weather will kill batteries and if they are weak, well the obvious happens.

I had that happen and the trailer moved up about six inches and stopped. When batteries go in our weather there is no jumping them. They are gone and have to be replaced.

Click to expand...

The batter bank is at 88% so that isn't the problem. I'm quite careful to not let them discharge to less that 70%. I don't want to have to spend another thousand dollars on another set of batteries.

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JohnDar said:

If you have the older Venture electric front jacks, you will not find an inline fuse. I replaced mine years ago with the original Ground Control system and found no such animal. You may find one of the little breakers under the rubber cover has a tiny reset button on the side that you may need to press. If your onboard battery is weak, it will pop it. Try connecting your cord back to the truck (running) to operate the jacks.

I found when leaving my rig at the dealer for service that the battery would die due to the parasitic draws (didn't have a shut-off switch then) and to operate the jacks I had to connect to the truck when I picked up the rig. The dealer used a forklift to move the rig after I left it, so it didn't matter to them if the jacks worked or not.

Click to expand...

I did look at the breakers like the ones in the picture and checked them for loose connections but never knew that any of them had a reset on them. I'll take a look at that. Thanks for the tip. It just goes to show that we are never too old to learn something new.

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wdk450 said:

Were you plugged into shore power at the time that the landing gear quit? Have you tried the gear again after the batteries have had a night on the charger, and time for the thermal reset circuit breaker to cool and reset?

Do you have electric gearmotor or hydraulic level up landing gear? We need to know that to give you the right info.

If hydraulic, some recent posters have found loose electrical connection nuts on the pump motor.

Click to expand...

Our rig is a 2011 and I'm not sure what brand of landing gear is on it but it is a mechanical one, not hydraulic.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

Big-B said:

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Our rig is a 2011 and I'm not sure what brand of landing gear is on it but it is a mechanical one, not hydraulic.

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Then your landing gear is the Venture gearmotor type. Besides the fuse/circuit breaker, the activation switch on many of these has been a cause of failure. I am assuming you hear NO motor noise when you try to raise/lower the landing gear.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

wdk450 said:

Then your landing gear is the Venture gearmotor type. Besides the fuse/circuit breaker, the activation switch on many of these has been a cause of failure. I am assuming you hear NO motor noise when you try to raise/lower the landing gear.

Click to expand...

I looked for an inline fuse today and didn't see one. I haven't checked to see if the breaker has a reset button on it yet. When the weather warms up a little bit I'll take my volt meter and check for power to the switch. No motor noise or clicking at all. Dead as a door nail. Our rig has been sitting for a couple of months and when I turned the porch light on it didn't come on so I tried the scare lights and they didn't come on either. Forgot to turn the porch light switch off and a couple of hours later I noticed that it was on. I suspect a less than great switch.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

Now I'm confused. "Rig has been sitting for a couple of months..." "raising the trailer with landing jacks so I could unhook..."

Outside porch and scare lights don't come on - then the porch light comes on? Battery bank at 88%?

Are you still connected to the truck? Are you plugged into shore power?

Can you lay out the entire electrical situation and clarify.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

12 volt shut-off still switched off? Also 88% of 12.8 assuming that is about what the battery started at is around 11.2V by my bad math skills and a heavy load like landing gear would probably draw it to 10 or so which is likely not to work at all.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

I would suggest starting out by checking the voltage at the battery first with the trailer unplugged from shore power, then again with the trailer plugged in to shore power. The voltage should go up on the second reading if the converter is connected and charging the battery. If inside 12 volt lights go off when trailer is unplugged from shore power, this is a prime symptom of the 12 VDC battery charging/12 volt inside light loads path circuit breaker (re-settable) being tripped.

Just to explain the long name for the circuit breaker, most people don't realize that this breaker has charge current from the converter going in to the battery, and ALSO supplies current from the battery going out to the 12 volt less-heavy current lights etc in the trailer. The heavy 12 volt current loads like the 2 landing gear systems, and slideout systems have their own circuit breakers (self-resetting) on a common circuit breaker bus bar connected to the battery system 12 volts positive supply.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

danemayer said:

Now I'm confused. "Rig has been sitting for a couple of months..." "raising the trailer with landing jacks so I could unhook..."

Outside porch and scare lights don't come on - then the porch light comes on? Battery bank at 88%?

Are you still connected to the truck? Are you plugged into shore power?

Can you lay out the entire electrical situation and clarify.

Click to expand...

We used the rig in October up in Michigan. Left it parked indoors and winterized it until we were ready to leave for the Southwest. Landing jacks worked fine when we unhooked a few days ago. We spent a couple of nights camping in Walmart parking lots and used the inverter for 120 volt power. The battery bank is about 660 amp hours at 12 volts.

We are hooked up to shore power, 50 amps. It is not a matter of having not enough power. It seems to be either a breaker, fuse or bad connection. Right now it is about 25 degrees and we are level and won't need the jacks for a few weeks when we leave for Arizona.

As to the porch lights, I'm pretty sure it is just a switch problem. I have had some success with flipping them off and on a few times but this time there was enough light in the campground so I didn't mess with the lights. A couple of hours later the porch light was on.

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Lynn1130 said:

12 volt shut-off still switched off? Also 88% of 12.8 assuming that is about what the battery started at is around 11.2V by my bad math skills and a heavy load like landing gear would probably draw it to 10 or so which is likely not to work at all.

Click to expand...

Lynn,

We are hooked up to 50 amp shore power and also have a bank of six Trojan T-105 golf cart batteries that are less than two years old and hold a charge like new ones. This is not an issue of not enough power.

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wdk450 said:

I would suggest starting out by checking the voltage at the battery first with the trailer unplugged from shore power, then again with the trailer plugged in to shore power. The voltage should go up on the second reading if the converter is connected and charging the battery. If inside 12 volt lights go off when trailer is unplugged from shore power, this is a prime symptom of the 12 VDC battery charging/12 volt inside light loads path circuit breaker (re-settable) being tripped.

Just to explain the long name for the circuit breaker, most people don't realize that this breaker has charge current from the converter going in to the battery, and ALSO supplies current from the battery going out to the 12 volt less-heavy current lights etc in the trailer. The heavy 12 volt current loads like the 2 landing gear systems, and slideout systems have their own circuit breakers (self-resetting) on a common circuit breaker bus bar connected to the battery system 12 volts positive supply.

Click to expand...

Bill,

No converter power. I have an inverter with a 150 amp battery charger that I have limited to 125 amps for when we are off grid and charging off of our Honda 2000i inverter generator. If we get a little bit warmer today I will take my Fluke meter and check for power but right now it is about 25 degrees out and the arthritis in my fingers doesn't like that very much.

I do have a spare 30 amp breaker for if one of them is bad. My brother had a motor home that none of the 12 volt lights worked on and I traced it down to a burned up 30 amp breaker. We took it apart and the bi-metal part that trips was burnt through.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

It sounds to me like you know your 12 volt DC systems well, have a DVM, and will get this entirely figured out when it gets warm enough to work outside.

For your porch light switch, I have sprayed Caig DeOxIt contact restorer/cleaner spray into intermittent light switches along the rocker edge spaces, worked the switch a few times, and gotten them to work again without having to replace them. Great stuff to have on hand for all sorts of RV/Truck electrical contact issues.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

Update:

I found the problem. There was no power to the wires coming from the switch when the switch was engaged so I traced the wire back from the switch and found it to be an orange wire.

All of the breakers in the hydraulic compartment had power to the draw side. I looked a little more and found an inline 30 amp fuse in the orange wire. It was blown. It seems odd to me that there is an inline fuse a foot away from the breaker of the same amperage but there must be a reason for it.

Thanks for the tips guys.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

wdk450 said:

It sounds to me like you know your 12 volt DC systems well, have a DVM, and will get this entirely figured out when it gets warm enough to work outside.

For your porch light switch, I have sprayed Caig DeOxIt contact restorer/cleaner spray into intermittent light switches along the rocker edge spaces, worked the switch a few times, and gotten them to work again without having to replace them. Great stuff to have on hand for all sorts of RV/Truck electrical contact issues.

Click to expand...

I've never heard of Deoxit before. Is it similar to what we used to call tuner cleaner or electric motor cleaner?

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

Big-B said:

I've never heard of Deoxit before. Is it similar to what we used to call tuner cleaner or electric motor cleaner?

Click to expand...

See: https://caig.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/C-MTCC_2018_OL.pdf

Available through Amazon or E-Bay, or professional electronics stores. I have it make switches work when filing the contacts with a file didn't.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

wdk450 said:

See: https://caig.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/C-MTCC_2018_OL.pdf

Available through Amazon or E-Bay, or professional electronics stores. I have it make switches work when filing the contacts with a file didn't.

Click to expand...

I'm going to buy some. I have a CNC Machining center that has some switches that don't work as they should. I'm going to try it out on that too.

Our home parking spot slopes and requires quite a bit of jacking to level. After changing out the 30 amp inline fuse for the jacks a couple of times I found a 30 amp self - resetting circuit breaker at the NAPA store that plugs into the fuse holder. If it trips I just go do something else for 5 minutes, come back and we're good to go. Lubricating the jacks from time to time helps too.

Jim Posz said:

Our home parking spot slopes and requires quite a bit of jacking to level. After changing out the 30 amp inline fuse for the jacks a couple of times I found a 30 amp self - resetting circuit breaker at the NAPA store that plugs into the fuse holder. If it trips I just go do something else for 5 minutes, come back and we're good to go. Lubricating the jacks from time to time helps too.

Click to expand...

I can remember some previous threads about the gearmotor landing gear circuit breaker (and/or fuse) frequently blowing, and as I remember the posts, "official" recommendations by either Heartland or Lippert to up the circuit breaker rating to 50 amps. This is controversial as to possibility overloading the wiring and the wiring heating up. Maybe the intermittent use of the landing gear under lifting load is a mitigating factor. Frankly, a circuit breaker and smaller amperage fuse that keeps blowing, in line, makes no sense to me. A self resetting circuit breaker on the battery buss is there to eliminate the need to replace a frequently blowing fuse. No need to keep fuses on hand.

I would say make your own investigation on the matter, and do what you are comfortable with.

Re: Electrical Gremlins are back

wdk450 said:

See: https://caig.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/C-MTCC_2018_OL.pdf

Available through Amazon or E-Bay, or professional electronics stores. I have it make switches work when filing the contacts with a file didn't.

Click to expand...

I just wanted to thank Bill for his recommendation on the Deoxit spray. I ordered a can and tried it on the switch for light by the pin box. It didn't work at all so I sprayed some Deoxit in the switch and after a couple of sprays it works like new. Best I could ever do before was a small blink out of it. I'm looking forward to trying it out on the switched on my CNC machining center when I get home from our winter getaway.