Hi DrJai,
First off, welcome to the club and congrats on your new Sunny!
Some of the older campers may have been modified from what was in it originally by prior owners. If you can post pictures of your electrical system and any name tags on the power system components, we can try and help better. We can then see exactly what you have and give better help to what you are seeing.
The basics of the camper electrical system are this. There are sort of 3 sets of systems/wiring.
1. 12 Volts DC DOT system. This the wiring system that is powered by the tow vehicle to run the brake lights, the turn signals and clearance lights and the trailer electric brake system. The truck 7 wire plug which is what you should have, sends truck power to run all these DOT lights. The truck also should have a battery charge line in that 7 wire cable to charge the camper battery when you are towing. That is, if the prior owner has it still all hooked up and the fuse is not blown.
2. The camper 12 VDC power system that is fed from the camper 12 volt battery on the trailer tongue. This power system runs the camper inside and outside lights (that are not part of the DOT lighting system), the water pump, the furnace fan, a radio if yours has one and some other 12 VDC items in the camper pending what you have in your 85 camper. The camper was built with this 12 volt system to run most things in the camper when you have no shore power to plug into.
3. The 120 volt AC system. There should be a few normal home looking wall outlets in your camper. And there should be a long shore line cable that could have a 30 amp special RV plug on the end of the cord. If you have a roof AC unit, the compressor and fans runs off of the 120 VAC. There should also be what we call a power converter. This unit takes 120 VAC and create 12 volt DC to both charge the camper battery and to create 12 VDC to run the 120 volt items in your camper. This converter and the other 120 VAC items will only work when you are plugged into shore power.
You mentioned you did not have a 30 amp outlet to plug the camper in. At home this can be common with folks just starting out do not have one. To get around this, you can buy an adapter that will convert that 30 amp plug to a normal looking 15 amp wall outlet plug in your home. They look like this
https://www.amazon.com/Camco-PowerGr...xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==
There are many brands, Walmart sells them or any RV dealer. You cannot get all 30 amps power with that, only the 15 amps that the house outlet is sending, but it will power up the onboard power converter, charge your battery and you can use all the 12 VDC items and any 120 VAC wall outlets.
Your actual power converter and fuse panel, you need to find this unit and take pics of it and post. If you look in the area inside the camper where the 30 amp shoreline cord enters the camper, the power converter normally is close by inside. It may be in a bottom cabinet or by itself. Show us, tell us what brand and model this is and we can help better explain it. Over years Sunline often changed the brand and model of the power converter as technology kept evolving constantly on this front. And often, the old power converter stops working and is replaced by a prior owner and then we have no idea what they put in, but we can figure it out most times by the pics.
If you need help posting pics, just ask away!
Hope this helps and have fun with the new camper.
John
Linear Mode
