Check Your Lugs 2

There is another set of lugs in our Cats that have nothing to do with the wheels. These are the lugs that connect our ground (green or bare copper), neutral (white), and hot (black) 120VAC wires to the buss bars and circuit breakers in our power centers. Unless they were originally installed with Lock-tite they will, over time loossen. When the wires are loose on the buss bars or the circuit breakers they will create resistance to the power flowing through them and resistance creates heat; sometimes enough to cause a fire.

I know, because this happened to me on a previous 5'er.

So, when you winterize the Cat, open the panel, remove the cover plate over the breakers and make sure that the lugs are tight against the wires. It only takes about 10 minutes to do the job and you'll be safer for it. Another 30 minutes of work will allow you to put electrical lock-tite on the lugs and secure them for almost forever.

Thanks to Joel for his post on wheel lugs. It reminded me of this prevelant problem that is too often overlooked.

Thanks for the reminder Mike. I actually try to check all my lugs every spring, taking off the cover that you referred too and tightening ALL of them.

This includes the 12V side as well.

You've also got to make sure the screw heads are not to big I had to grind mine down a little because they were rubbing against each other tighten one while it would loosen another. I didn't have the fire but had the smoke residue marks on the wall from smoking it also burned a few wire coatings off.

Just remember to unplug the Cat and disconnect the battery.

schrowang wrote:

Thanks to Joel for his post on wheel lugs. It reminded me of this prevelant problem that is too often overlooked.

It's only in the owners manual and on a sticker above my wheel well. Boy, I feel like a moron (a poorer one at that) for not doing it.

On the current subject, I've had the power/ground 12v lugs become loose and drove me nuts for hours on a trip a couple years ago because it acted like a bad battery. My external 3 stage charger was saying good, and I swapped a new battery in from a fellow camper and still was not working right. Lights would dimout, sometimes flicker, sometimes they would be ok. I figured it out when I connected the problems I was having to people walking around in the trailer. Due to the movement in the trailer and the power issues, I traced it there and reproduced the problem by moving the large gauge power wire around.

Joel