Having Trouble with Slide Room on a 2000 Sunline

[littlefoot]

Hi everyone,

I am having an issue with our slide room. We bought the camper used last year and the slide worked like 3 times of camping until last labor day when the slide would not go out or in. We cleaned all the ground wires and even bought a new battery thinking it was the issue. We had the camper pluged in to the electric at the campsite and we put the new battery in and went to put a new fuse in because it was popping them and we could not even get the fuse all the way in and it poped it again. We just had a friend come down and test all the wires for a short and found no shorts. Could the motor have a short in it or could it be something else. I saw a manuel on here that said something about a conveter from 12 volt AC to 12 volt DC and about a deep marine battery. Can anyone PLEASE HELP!!! Has anyone been through this same issue?

[JohnB]

Originally Posted by littlefoot

Hi everyone,

Originally Posted by littlefoot

We just had a friend come down and test all the wires for a short and found no shorts. Could the motor have a short in it or could it be something else.

Hi Littlefoot.

First Welcome to Sunline Owners Club! Glad you joined.

Sorry to hear about your slide. I going to have to make some assumptions here as to what you are seeing. You tell me if I am correct or not so we can help hone in on the problem.

1. It sounds like as soon as you install a fuse for the “slide” system the fuse pops immediately, you never even pressed the button. Is this correct?

2. OR or is it that the fuse pops as soon as you press the bottom for the slide to go out or in? And if so what amp fuse is it?

3. Or is popping when some other action is being taken? Please try and explain what happened in what order to better back into the problem.

If it is number 1 and maybe no. 2 pending fuse size, then odds are high there is a dead short in the wiring to the slide motor or inside the motor itself.

Your friend must of accidently missed this in their search for the short. How exactly did he test for a short? I’m not 2nd guessing him just trying to understand how he did the check as there is generally only a few things that can blow a fuse that fast.

Do you or they have an ohm meter? If so, start by unhooking the battery and unplugging the 120VAC from the camper. Now you have no power at all. Set the meter on ohms, test the leads that the meter will go to zero ohms on a crossed leed check.

Then put 1 meter lead on the battery wire that is for the (-) negative. Then take the other leed and touch it to the fuse clip metal that holds the fuse you keep blowing. Test both sides (blades) of the fuse holder. If the ohms comes close to 5, 10,15 or 0 ohms you have a dead short for sure in the motor or the wiring down stream of that fuse holder. Then is becomes a search and destroy mission to trace out that wire down stream of the fuse for nicks in the insulation. If none are found then unhook the motor and still test the fuse holder. If the short goes away, then the wire is OK but the motor can be suspect.

If you made it this far, then test the 2 motor leeds for resistance against each other. I do not know the impedance of your motor but if you are getting really close to 0 ohms then the motor points to having a short inside OR the wire leading into the motor has a nick in it shorting out the wire.

If you cannot get the meter lead back the battery negative wire you can try and touch a piece of bare metal on the camper frame that “should” be grounded. But it may or may not be pending a rusty connection along the way. If you can find the short using a frame ground then you do not need to go all the way to the battery negative wire. Just to not assume that if a ground check does not show a short, it might be because of a rusty ground along the way.

Hope this helps and glad to help more as we can. Pics helps too if we get to this point. We can see what you are up against.

John

[littlefoot]

John,

First thank you so much for responding to me I do appreciate it and thanks for welcoming here. This is a used camper we bought so I want everything to work if you know what I mean.

The answers to your questions are:

1. You are correct we never even get a change to touch the button to either move the slide out of in. We can't even put the fuse all the way in to where it needs to go under the sink in the kitchen area. This also is for the lights above the kitchen table too and the electric outlets there is a fuse for that too.

2. I don't recall the fuse popping when we tried to put the slide out or in. We tried to put the slide out and nothing happen and then we saw the 30 amp fuse blown.

3. No other action is popping the fuse.

Yes he did have an ohms reader but not sure if he did what you are saying I will have him read this post and try again. Also shouldn't I be able to put the slide in and out with the electric pluged in and not use the battery or do I have to have the battery hooked up too?

Thanks again for your help.

Dawn

[littlefoot]

John,

can you please explan to me about unplugging the 120VAC from the Camper is that just taking off the battery or is there something else to it?

[JohnB]

Hi Dawn,

The 120 VAC to the camper is what we call "shore power" this is a cord that you plug into the campground or your house to run the on board power convertor. This cord/plug looks like this prong configuration which is 120 VAC 30 amp. This is "not" a 220vAC plug that looks like the older house dryer plugs. 220 volts will short out your camper.



Mine is yellow with a handle, yours is most likely black and molded into part of the cord. I upgraded mine.

The on board convertor creates 12 volts DC (battery voltage) from 120 volts AC like the power in your house. It charges the battery on the camper and creates a large supply of 12 volts DC to run most things in the camper.

The battery is the other source of power. It is straight 12 VDC. The point of unhooking the battery and making sure you are not plugged into shore power is to make sure all sources of power are gone before testing.

The convertor on your older camper may not be able to run the slide in and out with out a battery hooked up. The new higher end convertors can, but the older ones needs the battery to be part of the circuit.

You asked about running the slide in and out with no power. The slide has a motor that is 12 VDC and it needs enough power to run that motor. The battery needs to be hooked up to run that motor.

There may be a hand crank that uses no power. But caution if you turn it the wrong way you can break the slide drive as the gear ratio is so high you cannot feel it breaking the system. Most manual slide drives are direct on acme screw and bypass the overload clutch that the motor uses.

Hope this helps

John

[JohnB]

Also it sounds like the wiring to the motor has a short or the motor has a short from your description. Have your friend read the note., they may be able to help trouble shoot from the note. You can post more info or take pics so we can better help

[EMD_Driver]

Not sure if you thought of this, but perhaps there is a short in the slide switch itself. If it's blowing fuses without even pushing the switch, that would be the first place I would check.