WA's 303RLS Electrical Mods

[TheMcLellans]

Just to confirm Brian's feedback, I was working behind the control panel again over the past couple days and pulled the panel down instead of pulling the control center down and this was 100x easier. Great tip Brian. Pic below of the access given when removing the panel. FYI for mine there were 2 screws going into the back wall holding the panel in, but also about 12 small staples going through the panel around the edge. I had to give the panel a bit of force to pull the staples out. I completely removed all the staples and reinstalled with only the 2 screws holding it in and it's plenty stable enough to not go anywhere but give easy future access when needed.

This is excellent !! - thank you !

[WondersAwait]

Following up on our setup. We're thrilled with how the system has turned out for us. We boondocked for a full week at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta a few weeks ago and we were not sparing about our power use at all; coffee pot couple times a day, hairdryer, etc. It was cloudy all week so solar input was low and we only really needed to use the generator once. We had a few travel days in our road trip that were without hook ups and the solar panels kept us pretty topped. Ran the DC to DC once just so that we would arrive at the Balloon Fiesta at 100%. Everything worked as planned and it was great to be as self sufficient as we were.

[Country Campers]

David,

It is good to hear that your system has worked well on your trip, ours did as well. Being "self sufficient" is an awesome feeling.

Brian

[acoleman43]

It feels good when things work as planned. How cool is it when you are able to camp stress-free because your system works without any drama?

A shameless plug for quality products....it is always nice when things work just as planned. You get what you pay for. I found Victron to be one of those products that just work. No drama, no worries, they just work.

[howson]

Moderator Note: WondersAwait's post regarding the Peplink and Parsec antenna installation are now in their own thread here: https://gdrvowners.com/forum/operati...llation-303rls They were moved with the OP's concurrence.

-Howard

[Jomani]

TheMcLellans I wired the D+ line directly to the main 12v power line from truck 7 way connector. Some decide to wire this to the lights 12v connection so that the charger is toggled on if the truck headlights are on; the problem with this for me is with my Sierra I prefer to run the headlights on automatic mode. I toggle the charger on/off via an upfitter switch in thr truck cab that is wired to an isolator, allowing or cutting the connection between the RV batteries and alternator via upfitter. It works exactly as designed and I'm very happy with the operation so far.

I know this is an older post - just doing a bunch of research before installing my Renogy 60 amp Dc to Dc charger. Since the charger provides isolation, just curious why you added an additional isolator. I planned to run the D+ line directly from one of the auxiliary switches in my Ram. I have 440 amps of alternator power so I went with the 60 amp. I am also considering using a second auxiliary switch for the LC input to drop the output to 30 amps when appropriate. I will use 175 amp Anderson connectors - just have to remember to turn off the switch before disconnecting.

BTW - your build is an inspiration...

Thanks, Joe

[WondersAwait]

Jomani Thanks! It was fun to work on (and that fun doesn't seem to ever stop, lol!) and even more fun to have in practice. Glad to share my experience here and hopefully help others with their own configurations.

As for the idolator, it's for when the RV is not connected. I use the truck as my daily driver so having a live connection in the bed of the truck was not a safe option. The isolator (triggered on/off with an upfitter) is the way I prevent a live connection in the bed because with the switch off the power to the 4awg lines running back to the bed is cut off under the hood.

[Jomani]

That makes sense. I have a Ram with Ram Boxes and was kicking around the idea of putting the Dc to Dc charger in one of the Ram Boxes. I think heat would be an issue so I am back to planning on putting it in the 5th wheel. I guess I will have to go shopping again.

Thanks,
Joe

[ncitro]

You definitely want to put the DC to DC as close as possible to the batteries. Voltage drop plays a big part in charger efficiency, let it draw “extra” power from the alternator, with the run from the DC to DC to the batteries short most of your 60A should make it into them.

[WondersAwait]

I purchased a used Victron 100/50 MPPT SmartSolar Controller and installed it this past weekend in place of the stock Furrion controller. The Furrion worked fine and I really didn't need to change it, in fact I didn't plan on it until I found this deal I didn't want to pass up. I really only changed it to allow the extra data in the VRM and to check the extra blue Victron box with my setup. My display looks more complete with the solar controller data feeding in now.

[WondersAwait]

No need to start a new thread because it's all related but coming in here to provide a problem I recently had, explain the weird symptoms we experienced, and then what we were able to find as the likely culprit. Hopefully thing helps anyone else that might see something similar.

We have been using our trailer a fair bit in the one full year we have had it. We are not full/part timers, just a couple that likes to take 2 week trips and then local long weekends. That said we've put on over 7,000 miles in the first 12 months. WOW! We did most of the electrical mods explained prior to this post pretty quick after getting the rig and have had our setup for the majority of travel. We had almost no issues at all. Until...

About a month ago we took the rig out for the first warm weather trip of 2023 (technically we went down to FL for a couple weeks in January but we're still going to consider that last season). We pulled the rig out of indoor heated storage where it was for a few months and got to a local campground less than an hour from home. We had 30A power which seemed to test fine with out EMS. However during our 4 day stay there we would periodically notice that the LED ceiling lights would dim and flicker. Usually this would happen when there was some other power draw like the water heater and pump going, so I shrugged it off as weird but still a tad concerning. Then on the last day we had a blip in the DC power where all DC totally cut out but AC remained; the Microwave clock held and the radio clock reset. We also had a beeping from the passthrough basement storage that I now know is the leveler control resetting due to power outage... but at that time we heard a couple faint beeps and carried on. I kept half an eye on everything which seemed to work okay (light dimming persisted) so no alarms raised at this point.

We went to hitch up to leave and the leveling system started to act funny. Auto hitch recall didn't work (makes sense with the DC reset, I guess, except I am still bothered why this happened in the first place) so we had to manually hitch up. The rear stabilizer retraction only had 1 side go up and not the other. Gave it a moment and tried again and got it to work, but once again strange. Hooked up and got home, whew! Unhitching at home showed more problems. We hit auto-level and it did it's thing but failed to put the rears down at all and set itself WAY out of level with the front too high by a massive amount, like visually bad. lol. Fine, we'll manually get to level and recalibrate the system, no worries. Manually using the system went all kinds of messed. The front legs had a moment of one going out and one going in, while they should have both been going the same direction. Rears we had one stop working entirely. We got both rears working and they would go the wrong direction, or stop partway and say they were faulting or overextending. It was very worrisome. After lots of messing with it slowly, we got it to relatively level where it could safely have the camper at least sit for some time and let us figure out what to do next.

Next was that we moved it back to the indoor warehouse where we store it so that we could do some work. I wanted to pull the tires to inspect tires and brakes, and grease the bearings. Glad I did because we ended up replacing the passenger side bearings due to there being way toon little grease from the factory resulting in some burn markings on the stock bearings after just one year. Not horrible and the spindle looked okay but we had it open so might as well replace the bearings anyway. We also changed out my stock CRE3000 for the SRE4000. During this whole process of setting up at the shop and working on the rig, the leveling system seemed to work just fine. Cool, except that didn't help to figure out what was wrong.

I was advised from a good source that this kind of a malfunction with the leveling system is probably a result of voltage drop. That's great because the weird power issues we saw before is probably also all related together.

Long story already long, we found there was indeed a voltage drop in my DC system, right off the batteries after the very first connection; the main fuse block. Not the fuse, but the BLOCK. Well, turns out that the short little 4/0 wire between my main fuse block and the main battery switch had a connection that came a bit loose on the back of the switch. That lack of solid connection resulted in a tiny bit of heat build up and you can see in the screen shots below where the copper wire got super hot and brittle, melted through the heat shrink, and started to melt the fuse holder.











I replaced the fuse holder/fuse with a new one and setup a new wire connecting the fuse block and the switch, then connected everything solidly once again. I swear that I had it connected tight enough but apparently after a year on the road it came loose or the lock washer got over tightened. I put new lock washers on those connections and I may go back and put some serrated flange lock nuts on the back of the switch, but we'll see. Everything seems to be working normally on the electrical system in the small amount of testing I have done since making these repairs, and I no longer have any voltage drop in the system. Most importantly we caught this before it had a chance to become a catastrophic problem; scary thing to find and consider that was literally under us while we slept.

Posting this tale for anyone that might be searching for an electrical gremlin similar to ours and also a cautionary tale to make sure your connections on custom electrical systems are all extremely solid and tightly fastened. I'll probably make it part of my annual/6-month maintenance to check all my electrical connections and look for voltage drops in the system. I'd rather spend a few minutes of redundant and boring preventative system auditing than deal with the consequences of what could have happened if we didn't catch this issue or shrugged off the weird electrical issues to be fixed later.

[Country Campers]

David,

Thanks for sharing. This will surely help others when looking for a 12 v dc issue. Looking at the fuse block photo is it possible to put a ferrule on the 4/0 wire? I am not very fond of the "loose wire under the set screw" type of connections.

Brian

[ncitro]

David,

Thanks for sharing. This will surely help others when looking for a 12 v dc issue. Looking at the fuse block photo is it possible to put a ferrule on the 4/0 wire? I am not very fond of the "loose wire under the set screw" type of connections.

Brian

"Someone"might have given him two ferrules to use for this purpose in the rework.

[WondersAwait]

"Someone" did and then in very me fashion I didn't even use them. In my defense they wouldn't fit in the opening for the fuse block and I felt like hacking them up to make them fit would defeat the purpose. Also to be clear, it wasn't the loose wires under set screw of the fuse block that had come loose, that was a solid connection still. It was on the other end of that short wire, the ring terminal connection on the back of the switch; the lock washer flattened out and the nut loosened up.

[ncitro]

"Someone" did and then in very me fashion I didn't even use them. In my defense they wouldn't fit in the opening for the fuse block and I felt like hacking them up to make them fit would defeat the purpose. Also to be clear, it wasn't the loose wires under set screw of the fuse block that had come loose, that was a solid connection still. It was on the other end of that short wire, the ring terminal connection on the back of the switch; the lock washer flattened out and the nut loosened up.

Yeah I've had that problem with ferrules a bunch of times. I had the same issue in the Multiplus as I recall. Which is how I wound up with extras to give you. Judging by what the other side looked like when wet pulled it apart I'm sure it's fine with the allen tightened down.