(THIS IS A BIGGY!!)

It's a true statement that 99% of all trailer problems are caused by a bad ground... Logically therefore - you want to make sure that the ground return path for all that stuff is copacetic and cool.

*NO rust
*NO funky connectors that may or may not be bad
*NO messed up screws going into the frame(s)
*NO "F'd up" splices
*NO cruddy battery connections

~You should be able to touch a ground point on the truck and trailer when they are hooked up with a meter reading the low scale of ohms (resistance) and read less than one. It should be zero, if it isn't - that could be the cause of a lot of junk going on...

In FACT (What is it all those money grubbing revivalists say? Oh yeah: "I TELL YOU THIS IN LOVE!") DO NOT hook the trailer up on the ball. Seriously.

Back up to it close enough to plug in the trailer connection - but without the truck touching the trailer and then test it.

The reason is that your ground in the wiring may be bad, and the only ground may be through the trailer ball. Trailer ***** make and break contact all the time - and that can blow fuses as well because of voltage spikes (I'm not kidding even a little bit)

THAT is a bad situation, and this is the one way to tell. Your main ground has GOT TO BE through the wires. It's the only way your truck can maintain a constant connection to the trailers electrical system.

I guarantee ya... <!-- / message --><!-- sig -->



*Please add to "TIPS LIST"

 

Great topic, Dutch! Thanks and added to the Tips and Tricks thread.

 

I tell ya what - I came up with that method of ground test after many U-Haul and RV ground faults that couldn't be found any other way. Trailer ***** and also fifth wheels (especialy 5'rs with a teflon pad on the pin) are notorious for intermittent ground connections. What I've noticed is that those intermittent connections are caused by the lack of any WIRING ground at all, so that when the ground cuts in and out (makes and breaks) while towing all hell happens to the twelve volt circuits....

*Turn and brake signal fuses blow
*Refrigerators cut out
*Invertors/convertors fry
*It plays cain with an alternator
*Anything left turned on in the coach may have a mysteriously blown fuse in the RV breaker panel that never blows except when towing


Go figure! All wiring has a certain amount of inductance and capacitance, so the instantaneous current draw when a contact is broken/made/broken/made can cause an ampere draw that is way beyond what is normal.

A good solid reliable ground through the wire harness ensures a steady, constant current flow that is predictable and within the limits of all the units involved. Without it - you might as well keep a jellybean jar full of fuses in the truck and trailer at all times, because I guarantee you will go through a lot of 'em...

*On newer ford trucks the (trailer specific!!!) turn and brake light fuses are a PAIR of four amp fuses located in a panel under the hood on top of the left fender liner. Because they are so low ampere, they can be blown fast. They are also an uncommon fuse rating, you should keep some in your glove box if this applies to yours

 

"COMMON GROUNDS" Revisited...
(I just troubleshot this one today)

PROBLEM:
(small Travel Trailer)
1) All the marker lights, both brake lights, and both turn signals won't come on.
2) You can find twelve volts at the connector on the back of the truck for the turn, brake, AND marker lights.
3) If you have a pigtail adapter (Like a four-way flat to a seven way) IT ALSO works...

The dead give away here is that the only thing all those lights have in common is the ground return path. I KNEW it was a bad ground.

On this one, there was a single long wire that came out of a junction box at the front of the trailer and wrapped all the way around the trailer inside the cabinets connecting every one of those lights in series. Inside that junction box it attached to the main cable that went out and plugged into the back of the truck. Guess where it seperated at?

It pulled out of a wire nut right there at the front end...

I see this kind of stuff over and over again.

By the way - usually the ground wires for 12 volts in RV's are color coded white.

That same wire nut was holding four white wires together:
One was the ground for all the exterior lights.
One went to the battery negative post.
One went to the negative connector on the convertor.
The last one went to the truck cable.
*There was also a cutoff end of a wire, that probably used to go to a ground point on the frame... (!)

That's maybe TOO MUCH information, but I swear! Any time you see a lot of stuff that isn't even on the same fuse or circuit messing up - trace the wire harness ground first. You'll save yourself a lot of hassle if you do.

 

The term for grounding through the trailer ball is a "soft ground" ...those are bad.

 

I guarantee ya....

And this old toy is about a 20 year old fiberglass soap bubble called a "BURRO", so you know all of the prior owners prolly thought it was cheap and simple. Some of the wiring in there was downright like what I'd expect from an ol' car hauler or a horse trailer - but I still think O'l Boy has got himself a fine little camper there.

The only serious issue is that it has a single regulator on the gas bottle up front. I thought they weren't even legal anymore...

 

They aren't... I didn't think anyone would fill them without changing the valves out.

 

Thanks for reminding me - I looked at the gas line but not the valve on the tank.

'Way minute....

You talking anti overfill, I mean the line valve.

Single regulators when they go bad have no backup to hold the pressure back. I think you can use them on a barbecue, but not a trailer.

 

oh, oops...

hmm... does it fail open or closed? I'll check mine when i get home Friday... I'd never thought about it.

 

We, ahh... Used to explain the reason for them to customers by telling them that with a single vice a dual pressure regulator you would know it went bad if you were scrambling some eggs in the morning and the burner flame shot up to the roof air unit....

(NOT a good thing...)

Newer cooktops though actually DO HAVE a seperate regulator inside of them. Fridges and furnaces have gas solenoids, but that doesn't regulate pressure. Water heaters I'm not sure if they have a small regulator or not on newer ones. Out of all four, the cooktop/oven is completely inside, furnaces are too.

The gas parts of water heaters and refrigerators are usually outside behind a vented door, although LPG burning water heaters are also built into the coach and cabinetry fairly often. So it is a serious issue, and it's also why there is a seperate LPG Detecter inside modern RV's that runs off the coach battery or convertor all the time. *HARDWIRED to the SOURCE

(This is completely different from roof or ceiling mounted Smoke Detectors that use a silly little 9 volt radio battery)

The LPG detector is normally somewhere around floor level, often on the side of a cabinet or bench seat (because these kinds of gasses are heavier than air). The simplest way to test one is with a BIC lighter. Without sparking the flint, hold down the little red gas release and it should release enough butane that the detector thinks it's LPG. Many people assume they are intended to detect CO2, but that isn't the biggest reason, flammable gas loose in a coach is a much higher risk.

METHANE, BUTANE, PROPANE, these are all HYDROCARBONS. LPG is more correctly named Liquid Petroleum Gas. I think most people call it Propane, because it was a trade name for it back in the day. This particular detector is the reason why generators with their exhaust pipe or vent on the wrong side of an RV are notorious for setting alarms off in coaches.
The small engines in Generators run on either LPG or Gasoline, sometimes diesel but that is rare, and their exhaust invariably contains some percentage of hydrocarbons...
(QED)

LPG detectors are very sensitive to hydrocarbons, including aerosol propellents in spray cans, including common Hair Spray

I bet you didn't know all that stuff - now you do.

 

actually, there wasn't anything in that post I didn't already know...

the only reason for that is because both my neighbor and I set off our gas detectors with fabreeze spray while trying to get the rotten meat smell out of our ice boxes (separate events)... It puzzled me when it happened the first time, but when I watched the exact same thing happen to her I put 2 & 2 together.


I take that back... I was unaware that anyone had an LPG generator on an RV... I'm hoping those came with more than just a 60# reserve.

 

You can convert any small engine to LPG, same as the main chassis engine.

But as long as LPG is much more expensive than pump gas, why would you want to?

I myself am far from being a politically correct "SUPER-WEENIE" or a Pseudo-socially Conscious individual (High School kids that bought into whatever they were sold in class and suddenly became bombastic about stuff like that were my favorite sarcasm targets way back in 1975). I could care less probably, if supermarkets sold cans of "CHUNK LIGHT DOLPHIN in Water", no doubt under the brand name "FLIPPER"... Hell - if some kind of fish were that smart they'd either have a seat in the United Nations or at least be sensible enough to GO RUN AND HIDE!

And what is behind my above comments is all of the noise about cleaner air, and improving the ecology of Planet Earth, but in order to do anything like that it has to be preferable to what people consider normal. In order to get a system like that - you have to pay extra to get it modified to do it. You also have to pay a higher price for the fuel it runs on. Why would anyone do that? Most people just don't - and that is why those systems are rare, and the whole concept has pretty much fallen on it's face.

What sort of an individual does that, in light of the fact that Mount Saint Helens and the recent Icelandic volcano eruption have done far more damage than any industrial pollution since the discovery of the Steam Engine? Disregard Alan Gore - I don't particularly consider him intelligent to begin with. He just wants to have a continuing income.

Or maybe not - because what is at the root of it is someone wanting to make money regardless of the feasibility of their root premise. Al Gore wants to make a lot of money, no matter what he has to do to get it. LPG Technology is the same - they spent a lot to develop it, and have to sell it to someone.

LPG fuel systems don't work, because we are not that desperate for fuel yet - they are economically not yet feasible.

And I tell ya what:

When putting fuel in anything I own results in less cash to PUT FOOD ON THE TABLE -

I guarantee ya, I know what comes first.


I bet I get tore up by a lot of people over this post - but I really don't give a damn. I think most people see it just like that, and the best thing we could be doing is saving and storing LPG and so on against the day when it finally IS the only thing left instead of using it up before we really have to use it.

Long before then I hope like hell we find something ELSE...

 

That's along the same lines as the ethanol they're putting in gasoline almost religiously these days...

ethanol costs more than gasoline and contains less energy... just looking at that, what is the benefit? Past that moisture and ethanol don't mix, so unless you're living in the desert, you will eventually have ethanol related engine problems. Engines built to run on gasoline do not like eating corn.