A Day (or few) in the Life (of a trailer owner) - sorry Beatles
Good day Fellow RV owners!
A short story for you...
We've had our Cruiser RV FunFinder 27BH for three years now, so I decided to get the wheel bearings checked\lubed and have the emergency brake serviced before our long trip out to the Texas Hill Country. The day before we were to leave, I went to the service center to retrieve the trailer and the electric tongue jack wouldn't work. I didn't have the digital multi-meter handy to do much testing, so I just used the crank to get the trailer on truck and headed home.
I figured the worst case scenario would be that something was amiss with the master control panel, so I powered the trailer with a portable generator and all was well inside - AC, lights, and microwave.
So, I continued on with my main thing I wanted to accomplish, which was to replace the Lippert Solara Powered awning drive motor. I completed that without any issues.
Next, I started checking some things that could have prevented the battery from charging and noticed that the battery was over three years old and decided to replace it. Tongue jack works now, but wanted to make sure that I didn't have a tow cable charging issue, so I checked the Ford F-250 manual and noticed that a fuse relay was missing, so borrowed the one from the powered window, but still no power at the plug receptacle. Light signals, yes, but no charging voltage. I finally went to a forum and found out this info:
""All 2017 F-Super Duty vehicles equipped with a factory trailer brake controller (TBC) utilize a trailer module (TRM) which initiates the trailer charging system. For trailer charging to operate, the TRM must detect a trailer is connected and a brake pedal input before charging will be present at the trailer connector. Adding the trailer battery charge relay and fuse into the battery junction box are not required to operate trailer charging with a TRM."
After reading that, I realized that all I had to do to test was connect as normal, start the truck and press down on brake pedal. Yay! Full charging voltage present at battery.
Stopped for the night feeling confident that all gremlins were addressed.
"Woke up, fell out of bed, Dragged a comb across my head..." started the process of loading stuff in truck and then decided to check trailer tire pressure. Hmm, what's a drywall screw doing in the side wall? Called CoachNet and 1 hour later had the spare on.
We completed the round trip trek to South Llano River State Park without any issues (over 600 miles), but felt uncomfortable the whole time without a spare. Since the tires were at least three years old and displaying some cracks between treads, I decided to replace them and the spare. The Tech at Discount Tire said the RAINIER ST tires were actually 5 years old, further pointed out that the lug nuts were steel ones with a flimsy aluminum decorative cover that rattled when you shook them. I was warned that they usually only last a few times with a torque wrench before eventually failing and preventing wheel removal, so I had chromed ones installed.
Conclusion, it's always something but at least my wife got to see some new birds for her checklist.
That's all Folks!
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