Chinook RV

Well, Scott, I looked at mine today while tracing out power lines, and it turns out that two power lines go down my _passenger_ side chassis rail after all.

One is from the vehicle battery going back to power / start the generator.

The other must be from the under hood coach battery. That one first snakes over to the driver side before apparently diving down under the engine and back over to the passenger side. I say apparently because I can't see all if it.

It's not very thick. Thinking of beefing it up. Not sure why it goes to the driver side. It's not for the boost function, as there's another cable for that which is easy to follow.

kdarling wrote: The other must be from the under hood coach battery. That one first snakes over to the driver side before apparently diving down under the engine and back over to the passenger side. I say apparently because I can't see all if it.

Huh, interesting. Is your brown box on the passenger side?

Before I relocated my bank, the house supply wire passed pretty close to the exhaust manifold, melting the loom and some of the insulation . If you haven't checked, may be worth a peek (just suggesting this because we have the same engine and clearances).

Hi Scott,

Coincidentally, I was just coming on to tell you that I now totally believe that your layout is stock. In fact, I've decided that Chinook wiring diagrams are just a possible guide to what MIGHT be going on

Because here's the way I finally figured out that my sold-as-94 (but built by Chinook in 93) is laid out, and it's not like my included manual's diagram:

PASSENGER SIDE CABLES

My converter charger is separate, under the stove, and plugs into its own outlet (easy to disconnect). The AC/DC distribution panel is under the fridge. This is actually pretty handy, as I was able to bring the solar power down the fridge vent straight to where the regular charger connects.

As you know, the single coach battery in this year is also on this side, under the hood.

There are two cables running on the outside of the passenger side chassis rail from front to back.

1. Generator start power. From the chassis engine battery across the engine compartment, then down and back to power the generator control board and starter. After the generator starts, this same cable acts in reverse to allow my Spec A Onan generator to recharge the chassis battery (and provide power to the generator control board, making the gen self-contained).

2. Coach battery charging. From the converter/charger under the stove, forward up to the coach battery. i love this part of the design. The charger path is separate from everything else, and this allows me to turn off the power to the coach so there's no load while being stored, yet the coach battery continues to be charged by any AC shore power and/or the solar.

FRONT CABLE

1. The Emergency Boost cable, which connects the coach battery to the chassis battery on demand via a solenoid controlled by a dash momentary switch.

DRIVER SIDE CABLE

1. The House Power cable, which goes from the coach battery, across the front of the engine compartment, then down to a solenoid hidden under the chassis battery, said solenoid controlled by the dash house Power switch. It travels from there, down along the inside of the driver side chassis rail, to the rear and then around the back over to the right rear closet bottom, where it comes inside to go to the DC distribution panel under the fridge. (A really long route!)

# Additionally, the stock Ford auxilliary power relay under the engine battery is used by Chinook to automatically charge the coach battery from the alternator while the engine is running.

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So to summarize my layout:

-Engine battery connects to the generator via a passenger side cable.
-AC charger recharges the coach battery via a passenger side cable.
-Coach battery powers the coach via a driver side cable that wraps around the rear to the passenger side.

Of course, everything is getting labeled, so I and the next fellow will know what is where.

Great reference material. Thanks for putting that together. I have masking tape/sharpie labels all over the place. Your vinyl ones look pretty fancy by comparison . Based on your info above, I'm beginning to think that our rigs have very little in common other than model year!

Re: labels.

Yeah I've gone crazy labeling all the wires, from under the closet, to behind the fridge (helped when troubleshooting and replacing the power supply), and now plan on laminating wire color reference cards to go under driver's door sill, and under chassis for the big rear lights bundle. Will save me and others from having to dig through reference manuals all the time.

I started with masking tape but they didn't last. Here's what I use for labels now. Also bought an extra roll of tape. The only trouble is looping around larger cased cables. So now I just ordered these zip tie labels, and I'll either use tiny fonts on the labelmaker to write with, or just a Sharpie by hand. Edit: here's the new tags: Regards,
Kev

I used to labelled my house wirings with similar label maker, but after a few months, the clear film and the white body started to de-laminated and came of the cable. I gave up using them after that. Maybe different brand have different quality.

Yeah, I keep meaning to go back and wrap a strong clear tape around each label and its tag.