C-Stack
Member
Also, If you don't mind, could I see what the battery connection/A-Frame set up looks like on your '76 or your dad's '79??
Help with 1982 15’ TT
- Thread starter C-Stack
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- sunlineclub
Hi Carla,
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I've been busy here lately.
From all your pictures, I have developed this for your battery hookup on the trailer's A-frame area. I will point out a few unanswered questions.
These pictures of yours will show what wires go where. I'm unsure if you can do this work or if you have a relative or friend who can help with the right tools. Or any RV tech can do this. Someone who works in automotive or an electrician has all these tools for repairing wiring and crimping on new terminal connectors for the battery hook-up. You will need a new emergency breakaway switch.
First is the battery positive (+) thick black wire and the thick white battery negative wire (-). Inspect both wires to ensure no burnt-up or open gaps in the wire insulation. Any damaged areas need to be repaired. On the battery black (+) wire, a wire terminal may already exist to bolt to the deep cycle battery. On the battery white (-) wire, that rusty bolt and connection to the chassis ground must be cleaned up. A new 10-AWG wire needs to be acquired and installed from that chassis ground bolt up to the battery with a wire terminal on the end to fit the battery post.
That will take care of the battery; next is the Emergency Breakaway Switch (EBS) and the blue brake wire. They spliced one leg/wire of the old breakaway switch into the black battery (+) wire. You will need to redo that connection so one of the new wires on the new switch attaches in the same way or similarly. There is no polarity on the EBS, so either wire on the switch is OK.
Here is where to connect the blue wire to the other wire on the EBS using a waterproof connection.
That will take care of the battery hookup. There are still some unknowns. Sunline used the wire colors using the RV standard 7-wire plug configuration. Which is a little different from the trailer industry. It looks like this picture is from Etrailer. This gets a little confusing, so I show the pic, but here is where it comes from. Scroll all the way down to find this image. https://www.etrailer.com/faq-wiring.aspx
Sunline used what is called, a split wire loom tube (the black plastic casing) to hold the individual wires from the 7-wire plug. They for sure used 5 of the 7 potential wires,
Blue = electric brakes
Green = Tail and running lights
Red = Left turn and brake light
Brown = left turn and brake light
White = chassis ground (battery (negative)
We do not know about the black battery charge wire or whether your camper has backup lights, the yellow wire, but some of the older campers did. Knowing what wires they have inside the wire loom tube would be good. Since it is split, you can fold it open, look inside, and see how many wires and colors. See here, as I can see the split in your picture. Have a look and see what is in there.
You said, so far, you cannot find any junction of the wires coming into the camper where the wire loom goes up into the floor. And that this is, inside the camper where the wires go up into the camper.
Here is where you can look for a junction of the white chassis ground wire and the blue brake wire. Take a flashlight and look where the flat red cable attaches to. That flat red cable, I "think" is the same flat red cable under the camper popping out where the wire loom goes into the camper heading the brake coils.
For the EBS to work and the electric brakes, there has to be a junction of some type from the blue incoming wire loom wire from the truck in the 7-wire wire tube to join both the EBS blue wire that goes back out to the EBS and the flat red cable. They cannot create that with only one wire from the truck; it has to split and be joined. It may be under the floor, but you can see the red flat cable; see if you can trace it to the blue incoming wire.
The 7-wire green, brown, and red wires can be one long wire run from the 7-wire plug to this fuse block and never split. They may have even brought the white chassis ground wire there and back to other locations.
Next is your power converter. I can see the thicker white battery negative and black battery positive wires run to the power converter to feed the circuit fuses. It is still unknown if you have a truck battery charge wire. More on that when you inspect the cables in the wire loom.
Here is a big unknown you can look into. There is the case of a power converter, but there may not be any 12 VDC power converter control board inside the case. I tried to find anything on that brand of power converter, and it came up empty. They were either bought out or went out of business in the 80s sometime. Maybe a fellow club member, by chance, has some paperwork from their Sunline manual. Being 43 years old, odds are the slime of finding something.
But take a flashlight and look down in the large rectangular opening under the glass fuses to see if any circuit boards are inside. Take a picture if you can. It is not beyond a possibility that the converter/battery charger portion died long ago, and the prior owner unhooked or removed the battery charger portion and just used the battery to run the lights and water pump. They may have charged the battery with a stand-alone charger. See what you can find. We can help if there is no working battery charger/converter, as these do die in time and need to be replaced.
I hope this helps get you started.
Johnb
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I've been busy here lately.
From all your pictures, I have developed this for your battery hookup on the trailer's A-frame area. I will point out a few unanswered questions.
These pictures of yours will show what wires go where. I'm unsure if you can do this work or if you have a relative or friend who can help with the right tools. Or any RV tech can do this. Someone who works in automotive or an electrician has all these tools for repairing wiring and crimping on new terminal connectors for the battery hook-up. You will need a new emergency breakaway switch.
First is the battery positive (+) thick black wire and the thick white battery negative wire (-). Inspect both wires to ensure no burnt-up or open gaps in the wire insulation. Any damaged areas need to be repaired. On the battery black (+) wire, a wire terminal may already exist to bolt to the deep cycle battery. On the battery white (-) wire, that rusty bolt and connection to the chassis ground must be cleaned up. A new 10-AWG wire needs to be acquired and installed from that chassis ground bolt up to the battery with a wire terminal on the end to fit the battery post.
That will take care of the battery; next is the Emergency Breakaway Switch (EBS) and the blue brake wire. They spliced one leg/wire of the old breakaway switch into the black battery (+) wire. You will need to redo that connection so one of the new wires on the new switch attaches in the same way or similarly. There is no polarity on the EBS, so either wire on the switch is OK.
Here is where to connect the blue wire to the other wire on the EBS using a waterproof connection.
That will take care of the battery hookup. There are still some unknowns. Sunline used the wire colors using the RV standard 7-wire plug configuration. Which is a little different from the trailer industry. It looks like this picture is from Etrailer. This gets a little confusing, so I show the pic, but here is where it comes from. Scroll all the way down to find this image. https://www.etrailer.com/faq-wiring.aspx
Sunline used what is called, a split wire loom tube (the black plastic casing) to hold the individual wires from the 7-wire plug. They for sure used 5 of the 7 potential wires,
Blue = electric brakes
Green = Tail and running lights
Red = Left turn and brake light
Brown = left turn and brake light
White = chassis ground (battery (negative)
We do not know about the black battery charge wire or whether your camper has backup lights, the yellow wire, but some of the older campers did. Knowing what wires they have inside the wire loom tube would be good. Since it is split, you can fold it open, look inside, and see how many wires and colors. See here, as I can see the split in your picture. Have a look and see what is in there.
You said, so far, you cannot find any junction of the wires coming into the camper where the wire loom goes up into the floor. And that this is, inside the camper where the wires go up into the camper.
Here is where you can look for a junction of the white chassis ground wire and the blue brake wire. Take a flashlight and look where the flat red cable attaches to. That flat red cable, I "think" is the same flat red cable under the camper popping out where the wire loom goes into the camper heading the brake coils.
For the EBS to work and the electric brakes, there has to be a junction of some type from the blue incoming wire loom wire from the truck in the 7-wire wire tube to join both the EBS blue wire that goes back out to the EBS and the flat red cable. They cannot create that with only one wire from the truck; it has to split and be joined. It may be under the floor, but you can see the red flat cable; see if you can trace it to the blue incoming wire.
The 7-wire green, brown, and red wires can be one long wire run from the 7-wire plug to this fuse block and never split. They may have even brought the white chassis ground wire there and back to other locations.
Next is your power converter. I can see the thicker white battery negative and black battery positive wires run to the power converter to feed the circuit fuses. It is still unknown if you have a truck battery charge wire. More on that when you inspect the cables in the wire loom.
Here is a big unknown you can look into. There is the case of a power converter, but there may not be any 12 VDC power converter control board inside the case. I tried to find anything on that brand of power converter, and it came up empty. They were either bought out or went out of business in the 80s sometime. Maybe a fellow club member, by chance, has some paperwork from their Sunline manual. Being 43 years old, odds are the slime of finding something.
But take a flashlight and look down in the large rectangular opening under the glass fuses to see if any circuit boards are inside. Take a picture if you can. It is not beyond a possibility that the converter/battery charger portion died long ago, and the prior owner unhooked or removed the battery charger portion and just used the battery to run the lights and water pump. They may have charged the battery with a stand-alone charger. See what you can find. We can help if there is no working battery charger/converter, as these do die in time and need to be replaced.
I hope this helps get you started.
Johnb
Sunline Fan
Sunline Historian
Site Team
Here's a better picture of the toilet area. Ignore the mess, I've been focused on the wiring and didn't get into there yet.
Once I get a little better weather and some more courage, I will peel back that duct tape and see what I'm working with. Any tips for re-seating the toilet? I've installed lots of toilets, but never one in a camper.
That looks pretty much like I expected. Toilet installation is a little different in an RV vs. a house.
Under the duct tape, you will see more of the same flooring except for a round plastic flange with the hole in the middle. It will look like this:
The flange is screwed into the plywood floor and the whole thing is threaded into the top of the tank. I see you have a Thetford Aqua Magic IV toilet, which should have a rubber seal on the bottom where it fits into the floor flange. The toilet itself is held in with two uniquely shaped oval bolts that go under the floor flange via two of those open slots and then up through the toilet, then the nuts go on from the top and hold the toilet down.
Before installing the toilet, if you have a way to dump water from the tank, I'd fill it up with buckets of water and make sure it doesn't leak before reinstalling it, since it sounds like you were not the one to remove it.
Sunline Fan
Sunline Historian
Site Team
I'll defer to John on this because both my '76 and '79 are pretty hacked up wiring wise. I haven't gotten into the '76 yet but the '79 had been chopped off and spliced behind the frame header and had a bunch of misc. wires. The '79 now been completely redone and looks slightly different from original.
I can get some of the actual frame if that helps but it looks just like yours, except for having a single LP tank bracket instead of the dual tray.
C-Stack
Member
Thank for your reply. I believe a previous owner switched out the LP bracket, as the info shows a single bracket.
C-Stack
Member
You are correct in that I didn’t remove it. The owner I got her from said the previous owners had removed it. He didn’t know why. They had left the toilet, but he only actually took it out once so he didn’t feel the need to reinstall it. I haven’t really looked at it, to be honest, since I knew I’d need to figure out the power before I’d have a way to pump water to the toilet. This will at least give a starting point.That looks pretty much like I expected. Toilet installation is a little different in an RV vs. a house.
Under the duct tape, you will see more of the same flooring except for a round plastic flange with the hole in the middle. It will look like this:
The flange is screwed into the plywood floor and the whole thing is threaded into the top of the tank. I see you have a Thetford Aqua Magic IV toilet, which should have a rubber seal on the bottom where it fits into the floor flange. The toilet itself is held in with two uniquely shaped oval bolts that go under the floor flange via two of those open slots and then up through the toilet, then the nuts go on from the top and hold the toilet down.
Before installing the toilet, if you have a way to dump water from the tank, I'd fill it up with buckets of water and make sure it doesn't leak before reinstalling it, since it sounds like you were not the one to remove it.
Sunline Fan
Sunline Historian
Site Team
A lot of models had single tanks standard in the '80s, but it was a factory option to upgrade to dual tanks. Although your tank base plate does look newer.
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