Wednesday, July 1
As part of the house battery short-circuit debacle, the RV had lost the ability to be charging its house battery while the engine was running on the chassis.
I tried for several hours on and off and could not figure out what was the deal.
I suspected it was the battery isolation manager solenoid but lacked the expertise to troubleshoot much beyond the point of accidentally smoking the replacement put in by the Ford dealership.
Martha found me a local Mobile RV Repair guy, Pat Serrant of PEM RV services Pat showed up today and two hours later he'd replaced the smoked Battery Isolation Manager (BIM), found a couple of fuses that needed replacement and which fixed the ignition override function on the RV's steps as well!
He patiently walked me through the diagnosis steps so that I've gained a better understanding of the charging system.
I really must remember to disconnect the battery involved with items I'm troubleshooting! The above tool, which Pat used to great effect, has made my purchase list. A bit pricey but beats having to find a good ground with a multimeter while in tight spaces or ackward positions!
You can also use it to provide power to a device when you have the chassis battery disconnected. Handy.
Thursday, July 2
Spent the morning redoing everything inside the house battery storage compartment on the RV.
After I removed the battery and disconnected the chassis battery as well, I removed and painted the wooden board placed there by the Ford mechanic back in Ohio.
While that was trying, I secured two metal plates as base support, using self-dapping screws to secure the plates to the seal frame of the box compartment.
I redid the routing of all the cables so that there's no way they can touch each other, especially the positive terminal by the shunt device onto which all ground/negative cables connect. It was the contact by the shunt device onto the battery positive terminal which cost the short circuit last month.
I also lined the walls with plastic cutting board material, thin stuff, to help keep the dust out along with water spray when driving in the rain. White gorilla tape was used to see all the seams and openings remaining.
By then used a ratchet strap and blocking pieces of wood to firmly secure the battery in place!
Here's other compartment looks now:
Theoretically, I could go camping now. But with the Fourth of July weekend coming up (amateur hours), I'll take her to storage instead. Besides, I've scheduled her for the shop in Parker, CO for diagnosis of recurring OBD codes.
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