12v Wiring

[BuddyRay]

See photo above. This is behind the propane bottles and on the other side of that black panel from my battery on the 26.5 RLS 5th wheel.

I went to pick up my unit today. It had been in storage for a couple of weeks and when dropped off, the battery was at full charge. The batter disconnect switch was OFF. When I picked it up, the battery didn't have enough charge to work the front jacks.

I got to looking at the attached diagram and wanted to see what y'all thought.

The wire from the battery comes into a circuit breaker on the bottom right (red). It goes through the breaker and loops over to the left side of the disconnect switch.
The right side of the disconnect is a large black wire that goes to the power distribution box inside the trailer.

On the "always hot" side of the switch there is a large red wire going down - it also goes to the distribution box and is the charge line from the converter. Also on the switch Hot side is a red jumper that goes over to the next circuit breaker to the left - and then on over by a smaller wire to one more circuit breaker.
And then there is a black wire off the 'hot' side of the switch going down - not clear where it goes yet - more on this below.

Off the bottom of the middle circuit breaker there are 2 red wires that feed the front and back leveling jacks.
There is also another small black wire here - more on that later.
On the far left Circuit breaker there are 2 orange wires - I'm pretty sure in tracing them that they go to the solar prewire (I see what you guys mean about small wires on this).
Finally there is a red wire off the bottom of this far left breaker.

SO - I have one small red and two small black wires unaccounted for.
I know one must go to the breakaway switch.
I know one must go to the charge line from the 7 way plug.
I ASSUME one is the power feed for the Lippert Levelup controller.

Which ever of these 3 wires goes to the Levelup controller - I can't understand why it's on the "always hot" side of the switch. I can verify it is because the controller and whole levelup system will work even with the disconnect switch open.
The controller on the Levelup system is "always on" - it's power switch is a "soft" switch - meaning the controller is watching it and when you push it, it turns on the display.
I suspect the power drain on this controller is what has pulled down the battery - I have no other explanation.

If I can't trace these wires to their destination, I'll unhook them one at a time to see which one feeds the Lippert system and move it to the switched side. Do Y'all agree?

One thing I've learned about Jayco wiring - colors have little or no meaning - there are places where a red wire is spliced to black, etc. You can't assume anything based on the color of the wire.

[Mustang65]

Interesting...
Do you have a volt/meter that has a position for checking for a small amp discharge/charge (usually 10 amp on most meters). I would open the Lippert connection and put the meter probes between the connections and see if there is a small discharge on the circuit (with the battery disconnect switch in the open position), which could have been the load on the system. If it does show a load, I would move the Lippert wire to the switched side, as you will only be using when the disconnect is in the closed position. I would also check the other wires for any discharge.

Don

[BuddyRay]

I did some more tracing - probably should have done that before I wrote the above post.
I was wrong about several things.
Only ONE of the red wires goes to the Lippert System, the lower left one off the middle breaker. I have NO idea where the other one goes - but it goes up under the bed. But it's NOT the charge wire - I looked at the connections to the 7 way cable and that large red wire doesn't wind up there.

I also can't figure out the two small orange wires. They go to a switch in the battery compartment that I THOUGHT was the cutoff for the solar prep - but there are two other, taped off, large black wires in the battery compartment that the manual says are the solar prep wires.
So now I have 3 more wires off the hot side of the switch that I don't have a clue on.

What else would Jayco pull off the hot side of the disconnect switch other than the jacks and the breakaway switch?
There is a small 4 way connector on the back hitch but I shouldn't have a charge line on a 4 way.

[BuddyRay]

OK, I wish I could delete this post and start over - I've discovered I was way off on a few things and I'm still digging. Here's a replacement photo:

I now know that the two orange wires are related to the backup camera. Why there are two of them I don't have a clue - but once clearly goes through the rocker switch in the battery compartment that another discussion thread has identified as the power switch for the backup camera prewire. Then both the orange wires head off into a hole. Perhaps they provide one switched and one unswitched power wire back there? Can anyone who's wired that camera confirm?

I also discovered that only ONE of the two red wires goes to the Levelup System. And that's the SOLE source of power - it handles all 4 jacks and the controller.

So that leaves 4 wires I can't identify (marked on my photo as ?1 - 4).
I'm sure one of them is the breakaway switch and I hope it's ?1 cause I want it going through as few breakers as possible.
One of them should be the +12 charge line from the 7 way connector. I'm betting that's the red ?3

So that leaves me with one black ?2 and 1 large red ?4.

All of these unknown wires head up towards the hitch. But I've looked at the wiring where the 7way wire joins everything else and there is no large red wire there.

Another thread suggested there is a power feed to the slide motors. If so, ?4 might feed the small closet slide assuming there are power relays in the setup. But if that's the case then I don't know where the power feed is for the main living area slide unless it comes off the power distribution box or is daisy chained with the slide closet.

I "get" why all this stuff is on the unswitched side of the cutoff switch EXCEPT for the LevelUp system and the slide(s) (if that's what ?4 is). Especially since the slides can't operate without their controllers/relays which apparently are powered from the switched side - ie when the cutoff switch is open, the slides won't respond.

I can't see any reason why I shouldn't move the LevelUp feed to the switched side of the cutoff since I suspect that is where my power bleed is coming from. It doesn't need to run through a 30 amp breaker - it's got its own protection (a main fuse and 4 fuses for each jack.) I'll just have to change the terminal connector on the end.

I'll get my meter out and start trying to figure more of this out tomorrow by disconnecting things one at a time to isolate circuits and measure amps draw to see what (if anything) is "leaking" and dropping my battery even when the disconnect switch is open.

Any thoughts or input welcome.

[BuddyRay]

No comments? You guys are usually all over an electrical mystery :0

[Vaquero]

That "disconnect switch " isn't disconnecting much at all.
I'm not surprised that the battery drains.
Do you know the amp rating of the switch?

I'd consider switching the source from the battery and the black to the distribution buss.then, the disconnect switch would kill all drain and everything would be powered when the switch was on.

[BuddyRay]

I was wondering about the amp rating on these switches as well.


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[Flapper]

Good detective work. Keep us updated as to your discoveries. My older 26.5 RLS will also drain the battery when left sitting with the disconnect off. The dealer tech speculated that it was probably the smoke and/or CO2 alarms. But he wasn't positive. I just disconnect one of the battery cables if it will be sitting for more than a week...it would be nice to know why the disconnect doesn't disconnect!

[Fingerlakes]

On our Pinnacle the combo propane/co alarm is always powered up. When we have to leave ours "un-plugged" for any length of time I pull the fuse for it and the batteries don't go dead. Also, I found out that same fuse powers the elec. power cord reel.

[DanNJanice]

Originally Posted by Vaquero

That "disconnect switch " isn't disconnecting much at all.
I'm not surprised that the battery drains.
Do you know the amp rating of the switch?

I'd consider switching the source from the battery and the black to the distribution buss.then, the disconnect switch would kill all drain and everything would be powered when the switch was on.

^^^ What Vaquero said.
My trailer did not come with a disconnect switch, I had to install it myself. When I did, I wired it so that only the emergency brakes were powered with the switch off.

[JFlightRisk]

Here's an easy trick to find power loss. Disconnect the positive cable from the battery, and hook a test light between the end of the cable and the positive post of the battery. If there is any draw, the test light will light up, although it may be dim if the parasitic draw is small. If you want to find which circuit is drawing, pull the fuses one at a time, 'till the test light goes out. Works every time for me.

[BuddyRay]

OK, I think I have all this wiring figured out.
I'll repost the drawing from above:

Here's what I figured out - and some of it's crazy . . .
Of the two small orange wires, one is (as I suspected) the power feed for the review camera prewiring. The other Orange wire - which is wired to the SAME connector - is power to the breakaway switch. Note that there are TWO auto reset breakers between the battery and the breakaway switch - not ideal.

Numbers below relate to the photo above:
?1 is the 12v charge line from the 7 way connector (TV)

?2 is power to the Schwintech Slide Controller for the front slide.

?3 is a charge line from the front Solar prep connector of the front of the RV.

?4 is the only think I'm not 100% about but I'm pretty sure it's the charge line from the prewire location for the roof solar. ie. it comes from the location prewired for the charge controller.

SO - there are two problems with this wiring:
1) the aforementioned breakaway switch. I cut that wire free of the other orange wire, put another connector on it and hooked it to the wire directly from the Battery.

2) BOTH the Schwintech controller and the LevelUp controller are wired to the battery side of the cutoff switch. This means they are connected even with the switch is open. Why is this a problem? Because neither one of them is ever completely 'off'. If you put a meter on these lines you'll find the each draw about 0.05 amps for a total of 0.1 amps on average.
THAT is why my battery was going down.
SO I moved the jumper from the breaker that feeds these two lines over to the switched side of the disconnect.
Now I have 0.0 amp draw when the disconnect switch is off. YEA.

It was getting towards dusk when I took the photo below so it's not as clear - you'll notice I got 'anal' with labeling all my wires. If you look close you'll also notice the shut bar on the negative battery wire for the volt / amp meter (see another post).

[NorthPoint5r]

I was under the impression that only the break away switch was on the battery side of the kill switch until I pulled the cover off to hook up a new inverter. Wow. Can you say current draw will the kill switch off.

[RedHorse1]

Could there be some configuration or calibration settings that would be lost in the schwintech and/or leveling systems if totally powered down?

[NorthPoint5r]

where to go to return to truck pin height automatically I would assume. Should everything else be Eprom stored?

[Grumpy]

Originally Posted by RedHorse1

Could there be some configuration or calibration settings that would be lost in the schwintech and/or leveling systems if totally powered down?

Lippert said all remains in memory with battery completely unhooked.

[BuddyRay]

I've rewired mine so that I cut off everything when the switch is cut off. I also installed a 2nd cutoff switch for use when I'm boondocking. It cuts off just the Lippert Leveling system and the Schwintec slide out controller.

So if I'm in storage, the main cutoff is in OFF.
If I'm boondocking the main cutoff is ON and the 2nd cutoff is OFF
If I'm camping with hookups I just leave them both on.

I do notice that the Levelup system looses it's "hitch height memory" when you kill it's power - so that feature doesn't work when you return power but that's a minor side effect.

[NorthPoint5r]

good idea buddy ray. Now looking for 2nd kill switch.

[slevar]

I’m going to comment on your statement about no large red wire going to the seven pin connector. I have a 265RLS too and I’ve had to trace a short in my running lights. Ongoing btw There is a large red wire going to the 7 pin. It’s for the brakes. Runs down left side of trailer to the axles.
My disconnect works fine. But I don’t have the level up.