LHaven
04-03-2019, 08:02 PM
After six months sitting in our driveway, our Cougar is finally on its first real trip (i.e., a destination other than the dealer's service bay). This rig has been a cast study in infant mortality. Before we even took it out, we had a problem with the HVAC refusing to turn on the furnace when the unit was too cold, or the AC when it was too hot (bad run of Dometic HVAC gateways). several days after that was fixed, the furnace refused to light (construction debris fouling the sail switch).
Now that we're on the road, we're discovering new and different problems. The stove fan doesn't operate, which is minor. The big puzzlement is the complete loss of DC when not attached to shore power.
We first noticed this when we tried to use our loo at a no-facilities rest area. We couldn't even get the inCommand screen to turn on so we could start the water pump. We verified that none of the DC gear was working, including the fridge and the simple pushbutton lights. We dreaded the thought of having to crank the slide in and out manually for the remainder of our trip. Of course, perhaps we had just blown one of the 40A fuses.
But when we got to our campsite and plugged in, our DC side started working fine again. I was pretty sure plugging in the AC wouldn't give us DC across blown fuses. So then we thought perhaps our battery was bad.
Here's the puzzlement. At no time on the road did we lose our TPMS transmitter, which is manually clipped to the battery leads inside the battery box. OK, I figured, maybe the transmitter will accept a wide latitude in input voltage, while my other systems won't. So I took the Interstate battery in to a convenient Interstate shop on the road today and had them run a load test while I watched. The battery passed with flying colors.
I suppose all that's left is for me to pull the 40A fuses and test them, regardless of my theory. If that doesn't pan out, does anybody have any suggestions as to what kind of a fault would cause these symptoms?
Now that we're on the road, we're discovering new and different problems. The stove fan doesn't operate, which is minor. The big puzzlement is the complete loss of DC when not attached to shore power.
We first noticed this when we tried to use our loo at a no-facilities rest area. We couldn't even get the inCommand screen to turn on so we could start the water pump. We verified that none of the DC gear was working, including the fridge and the simple pushbutton lights. We dreaded the thought of having to crank the slide in and out manually for the remainder of our trip. Of course, perhaps we had just blown one of the 40A fuses.
But when we got to our campsite and plugged in, our DC side started working fine again. I was pretty sure plugging in the AC wouldn't give us DC across blown fuses. So then we thought perhaps our battery was bad.
Here's the puzzlement. At no time on the road did we lose our TPMS transmitter, which is manually clipped to the battery leads inside the battery box. OK, I figured, maybe the transmitter will accept a wide latitude in input voltage, while my other systems won't. So I took the Interstate battery in to a convenient Interstate shop on the road today and had them run a load test while I watched. The battery passed with flying colors.
I suppose all that's left is for me to pull the 40A fuses and test them, regardless of my theory. If that doesn't pan out, does anybody have any suggestions as to what kind of a fault would cause these symptoms?