Sort on fuze panel.

[jsutherl]

I had a short circuit on the ford fuse panel. The inside one just under the dash, to the right of the steering column. It blew circuit 5 which runs most of the stuff on the dash; The rear view camera monitor, dash radio, dash cigarette lighter plugs.

I got down there and started moving things around trying to find a place where I could get another 10 amp feed for another set of cigarette lighter plugs on the divers side. As soon as I started moving things around --POP-- there went a fuze.

So I disconnected all the power and unscrewed the fuze panel from the wall. In the picture you'll see that the fuze panel is just screwed onto the wooden firewall by three square head screws. These screws where the problem. When assembled at the motorhome factory (or at some point in the past) it looks like several of the wires had been damaged by the lower right screw when it was put in. Gaps had been torn in the insulation by the screw. And while the screw is screwed into wood it must contact ground somewhere because that seems to be the only thing that the bare wire could have grounded too. All the wires on the fuze panel appear to be positive.

I used electrical tape to repair the insulation on the damaged wires and then put heat shrink tubing (two layers, two sizes one over the other, unshrunk) over the screw before I put it all back together. And then I was very careful to make sure that the wires stayed well away from the screw anyway.

I also discovered that while ford fed fuze 5 (the dash board accessory fuze that blew) with 10AWG wire, forest river chose to use what looked like 18AWG wire (very small maybe 22awg?) to pull power from the fuze panel. This explains why I see so much voltage drop trying to run anything that draws any amperage from those outlets. At some point in the future maybe I'll re-feed this circuit with 12gauge.

I stole the picture from Iggy since I forgot to take any of my own while I was working on it.

[VinceU]

Originally Posted by jsutherl

I had a short circuit on the ford fuse panel. The inside one just under the dash, to the right of the steering column. It blew circuit 5 which runs most of the stuff on the dash; The rear view camera monitor, dash radio, dash cigarette lighter plugs.

I got down there and started moving things around trying to find a place where I could get another 10 amp feed for another set of cigarette lighter plugs on the divers side. As soon as I started moving things around --POP-- there went a fuze.

So I disconnected all the power and unscrewed the fuze panel from the wall. In the picture you'll see that the fuze panel is just screwed onto the wooden firewall by three square head screws. These screws where the problem. When assembled at the motorhome factory (or at some point in the past) it looks like several of the wires had been damaged by the lower right screw when it was put in. Gaps had been torn in the insulation by the screw. And while the screw is screwed into wood it must contact ground somewhere because that seems to be the only thing that the bare wire could have grounded too. All the wires on the fuze panel appear to be positive.

I used electrical tape to repair the insulation on the damaged wires and then put heat shrink tubing (two layers, two sizes one over the other, unshrunk) over the screw before I put it all back together. And then I was very careful to make sure that the wires stayed well away from the screw anyway.

I also discovered that while ford fed fuze 5 (the dash board accessory fuze that blew) with 10AWG wire, forest river chose to use what looked like 18AWG wire (very small maybe 22awg?) to pull power from the fuze panel. This explains why I see so much voltage drop trying to run anything that draws any amperage from those outlets. At some point in the future maybe I'll re-feed this circuit with 12gauge.

I stole the picture from Iggy since I forgot to take any of my own while I was working on it.

Thankyou sir for both this timely post as well as the oil filter difficulty. Will aid many of us in future home maintenance projects.