{"id":22115,"date":"2013-02-09T09:06:34","date_gmt":"2013-02-09T15:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca\/?p=18360"},"modified":"2016-09-19T17:44:59","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T14:44:59","slug":"electrical-resolution-really-honestly-truly-im-not-kidding-i-know-ive-said-that-before-but-its-really-true-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/electrical-resolution-really-honestly-truly-im-not-kidding-i-know-ive-said-that-before-but-its-really-true-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Electrical Resolution. Really. Honestly. Truly. I’m Not Kidding. I Know I’ve Said That Before, But It’s Really True Now!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent some time last night chatting with Andy Baird<\/a> about my problem and the more we went back and forth about it, the more I knew he was wrong and I was right. It was like graduating from a very difficult technical academy. I suddenly had the assurance to know that someone else might have a good theory, but I had the real answer.<\/p>\n

He still thought that my fridge is somehow switching to 120V power even though I never put it on auto and that my monitor is wiring incorrectly and not showing the correct amps going out.<\/p>\n

Using his water analogy, I rephrased my problem. I have plenty of water (power\/amps), but not enough pressure (voltage) to use that power. I’m having a pressure problem. What causes pressure problems? Too small pipes (wiring) or clogged pipes (corroded or improper connections).<\/p>\n

I stayed up late rereading the voltage drop sections of Harold Barre’s Managing 12 Volts<\/a> and it said in more technical terms what I just said above. I had to check my connections again.<\/p>\n

But by this point, I knew my connections and wiring were good. The problem was at the rig’s end. And then I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’ve often praised the high quality of the Glendale Royal Classic’s construction, plumbing, and appliances, but what do I bitch about? Everything electrical. For pete’s sake, my rig has a different wire colour scheme in the front and the back! And never mind the crappy non-existent battery compartment.<\/p>\n

First thing this morning, even before coffee, I shut down power to the rig and got my hands on the wire that brings power from the batteries to the rest of the rig. It is very small, #12 or #14 gauge only, so that already told me that I’ll never be able to run all the stuff I want to run at the same time.<\/p>\n

I tugged on the lug and it felt solid, but I wasn’t done yet. I snipped the end off so that I could have a look at the lug. You might want to sit down at this point because what I found was shocking.<\/p>\n

Only half of the copper from the wire was crimped into the lug. The rest was just kind of smooshed around it and there were broken pieces. This was a factory connection. Even my bad connections were better than this one!<\/p>\n

I exposed a fresh section of wire and crimped on a new lug, then reconnected everything and turned 12V power back on.<\/p>\n

The numbers before I redid the connection:<\/p>\n

Voltage with nothing on: 12.5V
\nFridge on: 11.8V
\nFridge and computer on: 9.0V
\nComputer only on: 11.0V<\/p>\n

Now with nothing on: 12.5V
\nFridge on: 12.4V
\nFridge and computer on: 11.3V
\nComputer only on: 12.4V<\/p>\n

I think these numbers speak for themselves.<\/p>\n

Now, that I know every part of my system is good, I don’t have to worry if I see voltage in the 11s at night. It’s just that my rig simply cannot handle massive amounts of current at one time because it is underwired. So if I need to use a lot power at night, mostly to charge the computer or use the printer, I can turn off the fridge to get that extra pressure I need.<\/p>\n

Everyone who has chimed in about this, Airmon, Dave, Gary, Andy, Croft and I know I’m being bad and forgetting people, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Even though I solved this, I couldn’t have done it without your help. Each of you was like a dog with a bone pointing the finger at one possible cause or another and I worked at each of those causes until I knew for sure that it wasn’t the answer.<\/p>\n

I am going to eventually summarize this whole electrical saga into a series of static pages, but I promise, no more electrical posts for a good long while!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent some time last night chatting with Andy Baird about my problem and the more we went back and forth about it, the more I knew he was wrong and I was right. It was like graduating from a very difficult technical academy. I suddenly had the assurance to know that someone else might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1242,635,5,1039,3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-magnolia-beach","category-north-america","category-rving","category-texas","category-travel","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}