RE: Adding (a first) Battery

[garym053]

 
Did a search for this and found adding a second battery but nothing on this!
 My neice would like me to install a battery in their Camplite pop-up, so I m going down to Mass this weekend to check it out. It was pretty easy to add one to my Jayco as the pigtails where there, just had to strip them, add some butt connectors a 30A fuse and some ring connectors for the battery terminals.
 My question is: Is anyone familiar enough with Camplite pop-ups to be able to tell me if they included pigtails for a battery in their wire harness? IF not, can I safely assume that I can just splice a red wire to the fuse and positive terminal and ground the negative terminal to the frame? (That s how Jayco did it) Or should I contact the company for info?
 They are young and just had a baby so they don t have the money to have a dealer do the work!

[Tim5055]

 garym053
Gary,
 
 I ve never seen one, so I can t be specific - but you seem to have the idea down.
 
 If you have a meter check any wires at the " A"  frame while the camper is plugged into shore power.  In 12v DC, the colored wire (I have seen both red and black) should be positive, the white is usually negative.  As you already noticed, the negative may go directly to the camper frame.
 
 Remember to keep the fuse/breaker as close to the battery as possible.
 
 Check for electric brakes.  If they are there you will need a break away switch to at least hook them up for emergency use.

[garym053]

 garym053
Thanks! I asked about brakes first thing! There are none, they say it s a 6 foot box, but I think that it s 8 feet as I can t find any reference at all to a 6 footer!
 Thanks, I will check everything with a voltmeter. Hadn t thought of plugging it in and checking!!!

[Tim5055]

 garym053
Gary,
 
 If you have a digital camera, take some pictures as you work and e-mail them to me and I can add it to my [link=http://www.title-3.com/Battery.htm]adding a battery web page[/link] (with credit to you of course).

[garym053]

 garym053
Will do! I ll even include captions like " See me glowing as I grab the wrong wire"  and " Yes, that smoke IS supposed to be coming out his ears" , and " No, those are just EXTRA parts"  and lastly " yes, sometimes converters smoke and burst into flames spontaneously"

[garym053]

 garym053
Well, I did it! The battery was installed and wired in about 30 minutes! Tim, I only managed to take three pictures, a before shot, a closeup of the wires before splicing into them, and an after shot. If you want me to email them, let me know what size, resolution works best for you!
 
 I looked at the wiring harness and the Red and Black wire were nearly, if not, the same size, so I scrapped a little insulation from the red wire. Plugged in the shore power line, (GREAT suggestion, Tim!), and tried a reading on my multimeter- Nothing! Taped the Red wire back up to re-insulate, and scraped down the Black one, Voila! 13.24 Volts! (No wonder they don t charge batteries very well!) Cut the wire, crimped in an insulated crimp-on tee, added a tee to the ground wire as well, tied everything back in place- Done!
 
 Tested the Amperage draw with everything shut off except the detectors- .24 Amps.
 
 Showed them how to switch and start the 3 way refrig under different powers. Showed them how to run the furnace. Now I think they are all set to go. Just wish it would stop snowing here in Vermont!!! Enough already!

[Tim5055]

 garym053

 

ORIGINAL:  garym053
 
 Well, I did it! The battery was installed and wired in about 30 minutes! Tim, I only managed to take three pictures, a before shot, a closeup of the wires before splicing into them, and an after shot. If you want me to email them, let me know what size, resolution works best for you!
 

 Gary,
 
 I m just going to post them on my battery page, so any decent resolution should be fine.
 
 Glad it worked out well.