New electric jack

[Craigrrr]

Bought an electric jack 3500 # Haulmaster has the 2 side led lights and a 5.5 " drop leg. I do have a wire at the tongue labeled elect. jack So I ground off the paint on jack and trailer so to have a good ground and even used the star washers provided to give that extra bite. Now I hooked up the jack wire to the tm tongue wire labeled elec. jack, the lights are only dim and jack does nothing, so I chk for power at that wire, I have 8.6 volts dc. and I have the trailer pluged into shore power, but I did not have the battery switch on. So then I checked the 7 pin bargman connector on the tm , I have 14.1 vdc at that point so I plugged the jack wire into that and the lights are bright and the jack works fine. So my question is this...Why would the wire labeled elec. jack only have 8.6 volts?

[BrucePerens]

You would have to trace the wire to see why. See what it reads at the other end.

[Shane826]

Would the factory provide wiring schematics? Or are they so different year to year, and even unit to unit, that this isn't practical?

[nwhouston]

I had a similar problem with the factory installed "elec jack" wire when I came to where you are now. Traced it back to the outside fridge compartment, where all TM wires seem to gather, and could find no open circuit. Called The Car Show where we got the trailer, and the end of the story, we had to run new wire all the way back to the battery. Good news is we have solid power every time, and the job is not that bad. (Summary of the trace down process was to fuse every open circuit in the panel to see if that was the issue; no joy). Don't let the idea of just running two new wires to the back be daunting. Just use good clips to hold the wire to the underside of the trailer. Drill small pilot holes into the side flange of the grey water tank so you can put three clips along there as well. Ensures good ground and good power. Good luck.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Shane826

Would the factory provide wiring schematics? Or are they so different year to year, and even unit to unit, that this isn't practical?

The schematic changes little from year to year. What seems to change most is which AC loads come from which AC circuit breaker, which is not related to this question. You can find the schematic by downloading the owner's manual from the TM website.

Bill

[Craigrrr]

Originally Posted by nwhouston

I had a similar problem with the factory installed "elec jack" wire when I came to where you are now. Traced it back to the outside fridge compartment, where all TM wires seem to gather, and could find no open circuit. Called The Car Show where we got the trailer, and the end of the story, we had to run new wire all the way back to the battery. Good news is we have solid power every time, and the job is not that bad. (Summary of the trace down process was to fuse every open circuit in the panel to see if that was the issue; no joy). Don't let the idea of just running two new wires to the back be daunting. Just use good clips to hold the wire to the underside of the trailer. Drill small pilot holes into the side flange of the grey water tank so you can put three clips along there as well. Ensures good ground and good power. Good luck.

Yep, I traced it back to the fridge then up into the converter, found there was no fuse ( duh) but wonder why the little red led did not glow, I guess if I went inside while I had it hooked up to the jack it might have glowed, but still odd why it was reading the small dc voltage. All is working installed a 30 A blade fuse in the converter since the fuse that came with the jack was a 30A slow blow.

[BrucePerens]

The small DC voltage was what you got in series with the blown-fuse LED with essentially no current flowing. The LED won't light up without a larger load on the circuit.

[Craigrrr]

Originally Posted by BrucePerens

The small DC voltage was what you got in series with the blown-fuse LED with essentially no current flowing. The LED won't light up without a larger load on the circuit.

Thanks Bruce, good to know