[webslave]

Originally Posted by jtyphoid

True dat!

I wish it were like the automobile industry, where you can get shop manuals and electrical schematics, but the RV industry just doesn't have the volume and the majority of the customers won't pay the extra cost.

One thing you have to remember in the auto industry is that they are mass produced on assembly lines. Each "Focus" or "Journey" gets the same frame, same wiring harness same attachment points for hundreds of thousands of vehicles. Scale of volume almost mandates "standardized" part and harnesses. A base Journey has the exact same wiring harness as one that is loaded with options. Those options that don't exist in the base unit still have, for example, the plugs for fog lights or the trailer wiring harness; there just isn't anything plugged into them. That wiring harness is also used on all the vehicles built on that "chassis platform".

The RV industry does not have the benefit of "volume" to make standard harnesses or schematics of any benefit to them or anyone else based on the cost of developing and maintaining them. As another poster said, even some car companies don't...I had an Austin Healey and once inquired about an electrical schematic (I was having a tach problem) and the guy I asked (ex-British embassy head mechanic) just laughed at me. The story about running out of one color and just splicing in whatever color was laying around is spot on. RVs are the same. The builders know where stuff is supposed to be mounted and they try to come close, but, getting the wiring or plumbing to those devices is a "whatever works" type of thing. If they've got a shorter than needed piece of wire, that wire may make a detour to another spot that is "close" to what is desired. If something is in the way, that run of wire, again, may make a detour.

We all wish that it weren't so, but, unless a company makes just a handful of different models and has been making those same models for many years (like Airstream) then you wont' be finding schematics for plumbing or electrics. Some companies don't even have blueprints for the frames and walls...they are done with jigs so there aren't blueprints required; just load up the jig, spot weld, pressure glue the walls, inside and out, and you're done. No hand layup any longer like the old days.