Tuesday, June 16
There we were, motoring along southbound Interstate 71 in Ohio, heading for a Harvest Host location for the night. Suddenly, all the gauges in the RVs dashboard turned off! They turn back on immediately and we motored on wondering what was going on.
Less for a couple miles later, the gauge needles went down again and stayed down and the engine quit. I pulled over onto a flat spot on the shoulder of the interstate and noticed I had no electrical power as the hazard lights were not coming on.
We had also smelled a burning smell just before we stopped, and I found that burnt terminals at a solenoid mounted on the firewall of the RV. I also noted that we have no power in the habitat area. Examination of the house battery showed that the Coulomb meter's input terminal had come in contact with the house battery's positive terminal and generated quite a lot of heat and sparks!
So much so, that the cable going from the output terminal of the meter had actually melted right where it connected to the house battery!
So the theory now is, when the short circuit of the house battery was ongoing it was connected to the chassis battery because during motor operation the engine charges the house battery. This link allowed some kind of surge from the house battery into the electrical system of the chassis and caused the electrical outage.
How did this happen? Well, the previous day I had implemented temporary reinforcement of the bottom of the house battery tray. It had developed quite the crack down the middle you see. I had hoped the temp support would hold till I got the RV home. Alas, nope.
I found the board you see supporting the battery had somehow slid out from under the tied down battery, allowing the battery to sag forward, allowing the cables to touch.
The picture doesn't show the probably fried shunt device which had actually come in contact with the positive terminal of the house battery.
Martha called Coachnet to arrange for a tow truck. The tow truck arrived pretty quickly and got things hooked up. Previous to its arrival, I had dismounted the motorcycle from the front cargo rack, and removed the cargo rack itself so that the RV could be towed.
The front rack went into the tow hitch of the Honda CRV, and then I mounted the motorcycle onto the rack. I then also disconnected the Honda CRV from the tow bars in preparation.
Coachnet had found a Ford dealership in the nearby town of Mansfield, OH. That's where the tow truck went followed by Martha and I in the Honda CRV. The RV was dropped off and I checked it in with the service department. We got a room at the Wingate Suites hotel in the nearby town of Ontario, OH. A rather depressing day as you might imagine.
Wednesday, June 17
Waited all day, but got no status on whether the dealership's technician had even had a chance to look at the RV and render a diagnosis for repair. They apparently were quite busy.
A bit frustrated at the lack of communication from the service advisor, we got another hotel room this time at the La Quinta inn about 8 miles away from the dealership. Much better hotel by the way, their beds were nice and firm were the previous hotels beds were way too soft and tended to lean, making you feel like you were going to roll out of bed.
Thursday, June 18
We woke early and decided to go talk to the folks at a different truck service center in Mansfield to see if they could fit our RV in. They said sure, but their diagnostic guy was on vacation till Thursday of next week! They would of course rake a look at it beforehand but realistically it would sit for a week. We decided to put this option into our hip pocket and headed over to the Ford dealership.
The service advisor we had been working with was now on vacation till Monday so we were switched to another service advisor by the name of Ben. Ben was very courteous and attentive and arranged for me to talk to the assigned technician. We had seen the RV had actually been pulled into the service bay, you see, when we pulled up.
Some discussion with Randy, the technician, and I explained what I thought had happened with the house battery, he agreed that it was a likely scenario and I authorized three more hours of diagnostic time for him to run down all the wiring involved.
Well we waited for the diagnostics to continue, Martha and I drove the Honda CRV an hour or so to the heart of Amish country in Berlin, OH.
After a few hours in Amish country which was comprised of very few Amish sightings and crowds or should I say hordes up tourists seeking souvenirs totally unrelated to the Amish we returned to Mansfield.
We stopped by the mechanic and he'd continued tracing wires. I delivered the key to the house battery compartment for his access. He remains hopeful he can fix the RV's issue by end of next week. I hope it's sooner
In the meantime, we grabbed some clothing and stuff out of the RV and drove the Honda CR-V to Brownstown, MI to stay with Martha's sister and her husband Andy for a few days.
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