hey everyone, im new to the site and campers, just took my new but old little scamp out on the first trip and found out that when I have my battery connected everything seems to work but when i try and plug it in everything will still run off the battery. If i disconnect the battery i have no power even when i switch it from 12v to 120 under the camper... when i got home i noticed that one of the two breakers was flipped i switched them all of and back on and still nothing... any ideas what can be wrong? I can only find the breaker box and not the fuse box, where is the fuse box?... also I replaced the plug but i did put the wires in the exact same places as the old plug but i did just get the plug at a homedeopt could that be the prob?
its a custom 1988 13ft scamp that i havent had to long n dont know alot about any help would be amazing thanks
First of all.....Do not worry about the 120v plug. It is probably OK. It is only 15 amp and they are all basicly the same.
Second...My Scamp only has a single fuse on the wire from the battery box. No "fuse box" up in front of the trailer. If your 12v stuff works, it is probably OK. There are several wires under the front couch (no bath here) where all 12v wires enter the front of the trailer from the drawbar area. A couple of them have single in line fuses also. I have had no reason to mess with them so do not know what they supply power to.
Third....I am not sure how you "switch from 12v to 120 under the camper". My 12v stuff has completely separate wiring from the 120v stuff. I have no way to "switch" voltages. I either turn on a 12v appliance or turn on a 120v appliance or have all 12v and all 120v stuff on at the same time. Our trailers are owned by mainly tough, pioneer stock humans who "do it themselves" so a trailer that has been pre-owned could have any number of creative mods on it.
NOW...to what I suspect is your problem with dimming of 12v stuff....The converter is shot. Have it tested by a knowledgable person. About 6 years ago before we put the first 100,000 miles on our "Lil Critter" our 12v stuff dimmed out when we stayed a few days in Cody, WY. Took the rig to a young man at a garage down the road and after he tested stuff, he turned off the breaker for the converter and recommended that I go to the mall and buy a cheap battery charger and charge the battery as needed until we got home to California. Well, I invested $16.98 on a little Die Hard battery maintainer and have not replaced the converter yet. (new converter is $300.00 to $500.00)
It may not work for some folks to live this way. For example, I doubt if that little maintainer could keep up with a 12v refrigerator. One reason we like our Scamp is that our hobby is "doing roads". Back roads (Bevie's rule is that they MUST be paved!!!!) and secondary roads, we only use freeways to get to the next "new" road. We rarely stay more than overnight anywhere so, the car charges the battery during the day's travels. If we do stay more than one day for family stuff, rallies, or tourist stuff, I plug in the maintainer to keep the battery charged. I wired in a simple plug outside of the battery box so I can easily connect the maintainer without pulling off the battery box cover.
Works for Bevie and me....205,120 trailer miles and still happily "doing roads"....
Bob D
2005 13' Scamp "Lil Critter"
Brenda, AZ
I agree with Bob that the problem probably rests with the converter. On our Escape when we bought it last fall we were having a similar issue and found that there were two 30 amp car fuses on the converter board. Then there are a bunch of 15, 10, 20 amp fuses for each appliance. (Probably won't be that much in a 13 Scamp.) One 30 amp controlled the AC side of things and one controlled the DC side of things. One of our fuses was blown and when I replaced it problem was solved.
If electrical stuff is in your wheelhouse, a good meter and a pack of fuses should get you pretty close to where the problem lies. If not, take Bob's suggestion on bringing it down to a shop to identify where the issue is.
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With an 88 S-13 I suspect that it is a pre converter Scamp. If so the AC cable goes to a Square D breaker box under the sink with two breakers. It supplies power only to the florsent (sp) light over sink and a duplex on the end of the kitchen counter. If the trailer is equipped with a 3 way frige. there will be a duplex under the sink for the frig. There will be no DC fuse panel but there should be a fuse at the battery and a fuse on the power line from the tow vehicle just inside the shell under the front seat where the wires come in. The earlier trailers had 15 amp AC power plugs on the cord and only one 15 amp breaker was wired up in the breaker box. So if the 15 amp AC input breaker was tripped the trailer seemed to be operating as it should.
Eddie