What did people do to solve problems before the advent of the Internet?
A while back our slide outs started intermittently misbehaving during deployment as well as retracting. Then our automatic leveling system started momentarily hesitating in a worrisome way.
Here’s a photo of our rig showing a slide out and leveling jacks.
Both of these very important systems rely on hydraulic fluid to work. Our hydraulic fluid is stored in a semi-translucent reservoir next to the RV batteries. Measuring the fluid levels depends on the current state of these systems. Too low and the systems fail. Too high and the fluid overflows into the front compartment.
The problems described above must be caused by low hydraulic fluids, right? Not necessarily.
We asked the web. Here’s the fix. A heat sensitive copper strip breaker switch.
After a bit of internet research we knew what was wrong. It turns out the problem lies with a $5.00 breaker. By the way, that is $5.00 Canadian so about $3.75 in U.S. dollars. There are four 50 amp breaker switches hiding behind that vertical copper strip with all the wires attached to it. One of these little guys went bad and caused all the problems.
An easy fix. Just find the replacement part, remove all this stuff, remove the old breaker, install the new breaker, and it works (for awhile.)
After a few minutes of work we were on our way.
Epilogue.
The RV manufacturer eventually realized that 50 amps was not enough and bumped this up to 80 amps. We will probably stick with the 50 amp breaker for now just in case our wiring can’t handle the load.
Until next time.
Fifth Wheel Follies! 