I have asked no dumb questions for a while here, as events overtook my intentions in regard to electrical upgrading my 1998 Premier. Now I am back on track to get solar working and other enhancements discussed here worked in.
I will install larger chassis grounds, and clean shiny the connections. I see the probably 4 awg battery ground coming off the neg post, or off the back end of a 100 amp shunt, in my case. I see there is also a probably 12 awg black wire in the loom with the chassis ground, and it runs forward toward the engine space. It is nothing that I have added. See the photo. black wire is in front of the white one at right of shunt
My question is, what is that? Could it go to the combiner on the fender? If anyone knows, or can guess, I am saved from crawling my old body around tracing it.
Chinook ran the original small solar panel wire pair (12 AWG) right to the battery posts with an inline glass fuse, but at least in the photo, not sure those wires are even that "large"? Also that pair was red/black on mine.
It's been years since I removed it, but I don't believe any small wires ran from the combiner to the batteries. Those all went to the LVD (then just 8AWG from LVD to batts - that's the coach loads and charging wire). The 4AWG on mine was the cabling to the start battery (and chassis for same purpose) (positive via combiner).
If it's not the solar wire, was anything added such as alarm or whatever?
My Premier did not have the solar option, though have I since put panels up on the roof, which is the 8 awg black conductor also sharing that side of the shunt. I have an as yet undiagnosed charging problem causing both my PD 4645 and solar panels to not charge, hence remaking chassis grounds, losing the LVD, replacing the 50 amp fuse; all to eliminate possible root causes.
I think in troubleshooting my Bogart Industries PWM controller I inadvertently destroyed it, and will get a 30 amp MPPT device instead. But since the PD will also not charge, that's just a tangential problem. The shunt is for a Bogart Industries TM monitor, which shows only a small current drain even with the shore power plugged in. The coach power on switch in the cab will not go on unless the shore power is plugged in..????
I loaded my new AGMs with the fridge on DC down to 12.4 volts, and the TM showed that as a nearly 10 amp draw, to see if the charger thought they were too full to bother with. No joy. Since then (yesterday) I charged the bank up with a portable charger for their health.
Next, my plan is to elevate the coach a bit to go under there and check chassis grounds and fuses. I'll also follow that smaller black wire to the other end. I appreciate any further thoughts on the subject, this site is awesome!
I'm not totally clear on what has and has not been completed, but if you have removed the LVD that would affect the "store" switch -- it was controlled somewhat by the LVD wiring "roundhouse."
Another possibly related note: The reason for that store switch/reminder/buzzer when charging is that Chinook used the same positive wire to do two things (vs. two separate wires). So instead of having one wire from the house bank to supply your house loads -- and then another wire to send charging power to the house bank -- Chinook used the same wire to do both. But then if you turn off your loads via the "store" switch, that wire is out of service. Now you want to charge via shore or gen and.... sorry, that wire is shut off. Hence the buzzer to tell you to change the switch. And that switch I think was powered by some sort of LVD relay...
This is probably one reason they wired the solar panels direct to the house bank.
So if you have removed the LVD, but are still trying to use that switch? (Not sure you have.)
When I re-wired the supply syste, I went to a more conventional setup with load wire(s) and charge wires being separate. So I can control charging and loads independently if I want to (depends on how you set it up and there are a number of different good ways - but if charging and loads share a wire you are more limited).
It's never a bad idea to check over any chassis grounds. I re-did the main house bank one because I needed to upgrade the size in order to be able to fuse that wire to the start battery (4AWG is too small to fuse and still jump start, so they did not fuse it but that makes me nervous). I ran the new cable to the frame in the same vicinity (driver's side inboard of battery area) but bolted it through an existing hole in the frame, vs. a pointy screw. Then I also did the Ford star battery negative lead to the chassis in order to keep the whole circle fusable (can't have one tiny section).
Now PD is charging like a champ, I see charging light on and amps going in on the TM. It's either an intermittent electrical problem or a more permanent brain malfunction...
The LVD is still there but I have a new Blue Seas 7622 and a bunch of 1/0 cable and an intention to do away with the LVD, bring the batteries inside like yours, with a manual off switch.
I see the dual purpose wire you mention. To what terminals do separate charge and load cables attach in your set-up?
Regarding my initial question about the little black ground wire. It is crimped in the same lug as the white ground cable, and that makes it seem original. I'll follow it when schedule permits..Thanks for the help, Roly
Following-up on my original question....in the process of the upgrade, posted separately, I see that the small (Chinook factory) ground wire paired up with a similar sized red wire off the positive house terminal, with a glass 7.5 amp littlefuse, and they went up the pillar to a 12 volt power connector for a (removed) TV or the like, mounted in the overhead cabinet. I thought that was the purpose of the 300 watt inverter that was in an oak and elastic holder by the pillar up there. ??? Maybe I'll re-purpose it for a charging station for phones and computer.
Roly wrote: July 27th, 2019, 10:48 am
Following-up on my original question....in the process of the upgrade, posted separately, I see that the small (Chinook factory) ground wire paired up with a similar sized red wire off the positive house terminal, with a glass 7.5 amp littlefuse, and they went up the pillar to a 12 volt power connector for a (removed) TV or the like, mounted in the overhead cabinet. I thought that was the purpose of the 300 watt inverter that was in an oak and elastic holder by the pillar up there. ??? Maybe I'll re-purpose it for a charging station for phones and computer.
Roly
The black (positive) wire with the glass fuse is the original solar controller wire and should go to the location of the original solar controller location on the right side near the original VHS player. The "similarly sized" red wire I think is one of the connections to the LVD, sense wire or something. There was no factory inverter back then, so the inverter was probably installed by the previous owner, and probably powered a TV he removed and kept for himself.
Hi, Clay, You wrote:
The black (positive) wire with the glass fuse is the original solar controller wire and should go to the location of the original solar controller location on the right side near the original VHS player. The "similarly sized" red wire I think is one of the connections to the LVD, sense wire or something. There was no factory inverter back then, so the inverter was probably installed by the previous owner, and probably powered a TV he removed and kept for himself.
Thanks for the input, however my Premier had no solar until I installed it recently, I'm pretty sure that this power wire pair go to a 12 volt concentric connector I see coiled up and shoved back in the driver's side overhead cabinet. Here's a photo of where the 300 watt inverter was stored.
Looks like a home made add-on. The oak box must have been for the TV remote. The 120 volt receptacle mounted under the overhead longitudinal cabinet, to the left, includes a 12 volt cigarette lighter receptacle for the inverter. There was a flat screen TV where my battery monitor now is, with a 120 volt plug. I removed the TV and used the antenna hole to run solar wires. Was the original TV a 12 volt thing?
I know the wire with the inline fuse was installed for the solar controller. The wiring bundle is probably installed as a group, even if the solar option is not purchased. The PO may have re-purposed the wire since it was not used. I suspect it starts out black because they used in-line fuse holder pigtails that happened to be black, but on the other side of the fuse the wire was spliced to a red wire for the rest of the journey.
The factory TV was a 12V. There is a dedicated wire and fuse for the TV in the brown box distribution panel. There was a 4-pin connector on the TV wire that plugged into the TV presumably behind that oak panel in the front overhead compartment.
There was a white Winegard TV antenna amplifier with a 12V receptacle installed on the bottom of the long driver side cabinet, alongside the 120V outlets. It has a button and a green indicator light when the antenna amplifier is turned on. This might be the outlet your inverter was plugged into.
Clay, Yeah, I see that now. I installed the inline fuse (black spliced to red, as you say) and checked the connector overhead, finding no voltage. The fuse in the brown box was pulled when I removed the TV, ad I forgot about it. My monitor shows no draw when the in line fuse is installed. I'll have to trace it to it's end.
What was the 12 volt receptacle beneath the TV antenna originally for? In the coach as I bought it, the 110 volt TV was powered via 300 watt inverter plugged into it.
