Quote:
Originally Posted by flybouy
With cars/trucks it's safer to remove the neg cable fist. Reasoning behind that is if while loosening the positive cable in a cramped engine bay your wrench hits metal you're now welding.
Regarding campers, before I put a battery switch in I removed the neg cable for 2 primary reasons. 1. there's only one neg. cable as opposed to several positive cables.
2. If the positive cable would fall down on the frame and the shore cable gets plugged in it wouldn't do the converter any favors. Maybe a remote possibility but it's the kind of luck I have.  |
Just thinking out loud here:
If there are 2 or 3 cables attached to the positive battery terminal, for a battery cutoff switch to effectively disconnect
ALL power to the trailer, then
ALL of those cables must be routed through the battery cutoff switch.... That's the "issue" with the OEM BCO switch in most units. The factory "branches off some of the power leads "before the BCO switch" to always have power to slides, landing gear, CO monitor, LPG monitor, stereo memory circuits and ?????
So, to install a "100% effective battery cutoff switch" then EVERY one of those "cables on the positive terminal" would need to be "routed to the output terminal on the BCO switch"...
That's why (I think) the factory installs the BCO switch on the positive terminal. They can branch off some "parasitic loads" and still "cut off much of the power"... If they installed it on the negative terminal (almost always 1 cable) there would be no way to "keep part of the system powered on when the BCO switch was opened"...
ADDED: Then there's the state/federal requirement to have a functional breakaway capability during ALL towing over a specific trailer weight. If that cable to the breakaway switch is "connected the same way as the other parasitic load cables AND an owner installed a separate 100% BCO switch, by just pulling ALL the cables on the positive terminal to the new BCO switch, well, there goes that "unswitched breakaway requirement"...
Rocks in the soup??? or ???? without looking at any specific trailer and the way Keystone wired it, just putting a BCO switch on "all the cables on the positive or even on the single negative cable" might well unintentionally disconnect a mandatory safety device... Who travels with the BCO switch in the disconnected position??? Few if any, but if one does it and the trailer disconnects from the tow vehicle without emergency braking..... Just sayin'