Corrosion

My slides had been out for a while and we were expecting heavy rain here in NH this past week. So I decided to retract them. Silly me. They'd been out since we returned from our week long outing to Lake Winnepesaukee during 4th of July week.

Well, the bedroom slide came right in, but when the pump motor had to move the mass of the Living Area slide, it moved it about 6" and wouldn't go an inch further. Last time this happened was with a battery that had melted two cells.

When I removed the cover of the battery compartment and checked its cells, I found all OK. Also, the battery showed 13.73 VDC on the meter standing alone and 13.75 VDC hooked up to shore power. Hmmmm!

Then I noticed that the black (ground) lead had some green corrosion on it. When I checked, I found that the wingnut had loosened and allowed some resistance to build up, causing the corrosion. After I cleaned both terminals and the wire connectors, the main slide moved right, no problemo.

Funny thing what a little bit of corrosion can do to an electrical circuit.

If you're having problems with your slide or landing gear being underpowered, check the battery lugs too.

First rule of troubleshooting low voltage circuits!

I can't even count the number of service calls I've had over the years where nothing but a simple cleaning of contacts solved all problems.

Schrowang...That was some rain huh, we needed it though...

I'm just over the Rochester line we got about three inches...

My grass lives!

Mike, thanks for the heads up. Sometimes we forget something so obvious.

Tim, 3 inches of rain sounds so good. Our grass is beyond saving... even with watering, it's totally brown. I imagine water restrictions will stop the watering soon. Scruffy is thinking of shutting off the sprinklers to the lawn, and just keeping the ones around the house on schedule. Foundations (slabs, no basements)around here crack if the ground dries up.

Tater

In my experience, when the main slide stops dead in its tracks, the breaker has tripped. Either give it minute to reset, or buy a bigger breaker and install. The battery tip is good, but that's usually not what causes that to happen.

TC

Amen TC

Scruffy and Tater wrote:Mike, thanks for the heads up. Sometimes we forget something so obvious.

This is often the case. Thanks for this tip!

TC - There is another post here somewhere were 2 40 amp breakers are hooked together to solve the problem. It was interesting when I was adding my electrical panel(for solar and trailer) I had the opportunity to check out my breakers. I have 2 40's. But FR never used them. When FR wired the trailer they just hooked everything to the out going post. No breaker problems here because they were never hooked up. Wired it correctly and they do work so I have no idea why it was wired that way.

I have a single 100A breaker for mine. Of course, mine originally came with a single 40A.

TC