R&R Distribution Center

Our Forest River Salem here has an old-style distribution center that has the converter that's all in one part of it. It's a 45 amp model, and we had problems with it. We did a previous video going through. We were not getting a charge to our batteries, so the batteries would go dead during any kind of boondocking. And, uh, Steve, our RVIA uh, master certified technician went through this and found that it's something down in one of the, in the converter portion.

Uh, of the relay center in there cause we, we now, we've got it plugged in. We check back here. That's our main cord coming in. We see we got power to all our. Here We're gonna check our.

Voltage For the 12 volt. And so what we found is that when we plugged in, the lights are working. So we know we got 12 volt coming out of this distribution center, but it's just not going through the charging portion of it that's supposed to get up into the front. So when I, when I take this multimeter and I go down to my. Negative lead here and hit any one of these.

We see we're at 18.9, so we know we got. And this is our awning 18. 18 So all of these are good. And then we know we got power to it, but when we go to here. And here We have nothing.

So we're not getting a charge to that battery. Now, we basically got three options. We could replace just the converter or even just the module that's bad in there. Um, that's gonna cost about $275 from what I found. And we still have an old distribution center, and a lot of wires, but with that, we have to put in a brand new 12 volt board into it.

So there's, there's quite a bit of work to still have an old system in, in there. We could get a standalone uh converter like the WFco or whatever that we would put in here and hook that up with these two, the, the red and the uh white to charge our batteries, but we decided to go with a, a little better option here, in my opinion. This is a progressive dynamics. It is a uh 50 amp. Uh, charger and it's the PD 4600, I believe.

And uh, we got this from Progressive Dynamics and I talked to Dennis out there who's our go to guy when it comes to electrical systems and stuff. And, uh, he said, my, my choice, um, and they had sent this earlier, we're using it as demonstrations for a lot of our, our live events. And he said, my, my suggestion would be put this in. Now, it's gonna be a little smaller um in the cavity, so I'm gonna have to do a little modification in there, but what I like about this one. is that uh it has on the backside here, these are heavier gauge, 12 volt positive wires.

This is for anything that needs a 30 amp circuit on our 12 volt. These are gonna be smaller gauge wires or lighter gauge, and they're gonna be able to handle up to 25. And we look here, we got 1515, 15, and I believe, the last one is Uh, we got a 10 on the water pump and a 15 on the radio, so everything in here is, uh, is gonna be lower than what this is capable of, of taking. So, what we're gonna do then is we're gonna use a waterproof shrink wrap connector on these for our 12 volt leads. We're gonna bring in then our 120.

is gonna sit right in here. We're gonna take the fuses out of this. They look to be in really good condition and uh we're gonna swap all this out. Now, the first thing I wanna do is with any project I do, I start disassembling stuff and have to reassemble. I am gonna take a picture.

Of just about everything I possibly can, so I know. I don't have to worry too much about that bottom section. Here we go. So now I got that recorded and I think I need a reference. It's a great thing to have to be able to go back and say, OK, yep, this white wire one here, this one here.

So, what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna have them unplug this. We wanna make sure that this is completely dead, that we have no power going here before and, and I have unplugged the uh 12-volt batteries. And so we are going to make sure that everything is off. I see the lights went off. I see no No power anywhere in here.

So it looks like we're, we're good to start taking this apart. Now, one of the things I am gonna do and when I get into any kind of electrical stuff. Since we're dead in here and I have no issues with any power or getting electrocuted or even just shocked, um, I'm gonna put these wires into sequence and at the very end of this, we're gonna make sure that we have Steve or a certified electrician go through and make sure everything's working before we shove this back in and, and put it out in the open market, but I, I think I feel pretty comfortable that um I can swap these wires around. So with that, we'll get started. First thing we're gonna do is take out the electrical plug.

And the hardest ones are down at the bottom, so I'm just gonna start. And I'm not worried too much about where these are at. Because Location really doesn't matter when I put them in these spots here, then I'll be able to tell where they're going, um, and which one is, is going into each section just by being able to pull them out and see what works and what doesn't work. Some of these have been in there a while, so they're a little tough. These are 15 amp.

Usually the color will tell you blue is gonna be 15 and uh. You should be able to Take each one of these out. And I kinda wanna leave these clustered together, even though I'm going to put those in a bus bar, cause I wanna make sure I don't get anything mixed up in where some of the stuff is at. That's all going through there. Yeah, it looks like I'm gonna have to.

Take some of these out because they are run through. Yeah, these two. All right. So, since we're gonna go into a bus bar with this. What I'm gonna do is cut.

These 2 I think I'm just gonna See, here's part of the problem, if you can get a close up of that, you know, what I don't like about doing all these with a wire net and twist tying all these stuff is that Exposure, you can see right there how that's pulling out. And I doubt that's making the connection. That, that could be part of our problem. It's hard to tell, and I just, I, you know, it, it's a lot faster, it's a lot cheaper for manufacturers to do that. That's why they don't use a bus bar, um, like, you know, like you should do.

And I think when we're done with this, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take that bus bar and put it back in and, uh, secure it, because that's our, that's our ground, that's what's going to, and, and what I do like about this, um, I think it is nice, is that they have individual runs for the uh for the ground on this. And a lot of times what you'll see is they'll take a, a ground wire and they'll go to a chassis point. And I just hook it to a frame rail or something thinking, you know, the entire underbelly of this is a steel framework. And so are, you know, some of the, uh, side walls are steel and, and whatever. And then when they put an appliance in or a radio or a light, all they have to do is go down to the chassis ground.

Well, there are so many gremlins when it comes to these chassis. If you get a small little hairline crack in that, then you've just lost continuity. You have an open circuit, so you, it doesn't work. And the, and the gremlin that I call these things is that sometimes that weld, the steel will expand and contract with different temperatures. So you've got a hairline crack in a weld somewhere, and all of a sudden it expands just enough so it won't work.

And then you take it to a dealership and the temperature's changed, and wow, look at that, it works fine. So, I like the fact that they don't rely on all these weak points, like the welds and so forth in there to grab continuity for the ground of it. These have got individual ground wires coming from the lights and the radios and so forth. So, I, I, I do applaud them for that. Um, I just, you know, I just don't like the wire net, like we see here, just for the simple fact that That's not good.

So let's get in here and see if we can get some of this coding. Or just do that. So, All right, we are gonna mark this stuff and make sure we know. All these. coming from the ground wires.

All these are out. So it looked like this went up into the fuse panel, which we're not gonna need. We're gonna come off of this. You got 2 wires there. So we have a romex.

OK. So the main line is this one right here. We got OK, and then it's gonna go to the bottom of this one. And so, So this is our main, that's our 30 amp. Main shut off breaker for the 120 volt.

And then each one of these is individual. So, we got the main, that's our 30 amp. We have the air is our 20 amp. We have the microwave, which is 20 amp. And we have or 15, excuse me, we have the.

Kitchen The outlets there are 15 amp, um. This one says the generator, but it doesn't have a generator and then this is the. GFI for our converter. So we're gonna keep that. And we're gonna use the same circuit breakers.

All right, so before I go too much further. I'm gonna identify these. I'm gonna get you get a little bit of uh tape and just put on these so I know exactly which ones are coming off of. What for my. Circuits to come up in here.

So, I'm gonna grab some tape and uh a pen, and we will mark these so we can put them back in the right order. So, we got some just green tape. You can use any kind of stuff you want, just as long as you can mark on it and, and know where it's at. We went back to my photo here, and I can see exactly the big large one right here came off and went to that 30 amp, so I'm gonna tear off a piece of tape. It's gonna be 30 amp.

So we know that's our main, cause none of the other ones are 30. And then I see I've got one here with some tape on it. One's got to come from the roof air conditioner. What's this one? One Here we still have 2 of them on there.

The 2 extra ones, so I want to know where this one came from. Looks like it's on. Roma, so where did that one come from? OK, that one went in this one, I can tell. Uh, came from the underside and was twist tied with the another yellow one, so that is not one.

This is my 20. Amp air conditioner. So I can do 20 amp AC. So that's the 2 I've taken off already. Now I know my next one is the kitchen.

15 We don't need to have them quite that big, but at least I can read them then. My next one is the. Gin. I'm not sure what that stands for because we do not have an onboard generator, but it's gotta be some electrical GE N G E N E. The oven runs at 12 volt and LP.

And that is. 15 also. So that one converter, OK. So this one's gonna be uh quite a few wires. A part of that.

All right. That I can trace back. We'll find that. OK This is my converter wire that went down in. Ah Since those are tight, and we're gonna redo these anyway.

We're just gonna go in and I can pull that up. That's not a problem. Right. That is our main power cord coming in. It looks like there's a ton of that in there.

And it's yep, that's our 30 amp, so we're able to match all of those. We have our To 12 volts coming in here. We just need to Pop these out. Alright, so. That's our old one.

Now we just gotta make sure. We match up, here is our 20 amp AC. The two of them coming through here. This is our. Generator 15, whatever that goes to, and I'm gonna trace those wires and take this top thing off.

I'm gonna trace those wires back so I know exactly where they're going to cause that's all 120 volt. As well as that's coming from this one we have our. 15 volts. A 15 amp kitchen. 20 amp AC the gin.

And then uh A converter. So, we're gonna bring the new power in, we are gonna use the same. Here, these are gonna go in. Once they're hooked up. Like that.

We had 15:15. We actually have room. For one more set if we need it, with a small trailer like this, we don't have a second rough air conditioner. We don't have a residential refrigerator, so there's a lot of things that um And we do have a, we've got a dometic refrigerator, so one of these needs to go to that dometic. So we will trace that down and I'm not sure where the gin says, where the kitchen says.

But we'll find out what those are and then we'll get this. Back all hooked up, connect our 12 volt wires and uh. We'll be in business. So, I pulled the front of this bench seat off of here cause I just wanted to make sure I knew exactly where everything was going, how much room I had. We're gonna put a bus bar in here.

We're gonna have to frame this stuff up. But I was a little concerned about a couple of the wires that had just didn't seem quite right, like this yellow one here. And so I want to be able to trace it. And what I did. If I pulled this off, stuck my head in here, and I can see there is a junction box here.

And all that does is to bring a wire up in the inside of it. It's got wire nuts in here. And then I followed that all along the inside of this bench here that George had done beforehand. And so, I found And it went over to the backside and then kind of disappeared in, in the wall. And I know George had put new wall and bunks and stuff in here, and all of a sudden there was, there was an outlet back in this corner, which I don't think was there before cause that looks like a new wire feed that's going in.

So this is just going to a, a simple outlet. Um, it could be hooked up to any one of the circuits, uh, like the, um, kitchens and so forth. And so, we're gonna go through and put the main stuff in. And we, we know right now we have a rough air conditioner, we have the kitchens, I think we have the microwave. It's a 30 amp main.

It was the kitchen 20 amp. AC air conditioner, so I know we had. Um, looks like the microwave must be hooked to the kitchen. Cause that's that would be plugged into an outlet. So we know what we have for 120 in this.

We've got the roof air conditioner, we've got that here. The refrigerator is something I don't see marked anywhere on here. So we're gonna hook up with what we know is in here, see what's left, and find out if that works or doesn't work. And so we're gonna start with the 30 amp main, that's this one here. So we're gonna hook into the bottom with our 30 amp, this is our pigtail coming in.

We got some pretty good room here. So the power side is gonna hot, it's gonna go to our, our breaker, and we're gonna do our neutral on our ground on these bus bars, and that's what we're gonna use a similar type of a bus bar for the neutral instead of doing that big loop de loop we saw on the other one. Yeah. We'll just leave that in there. Let it work for us, see if we get enough.

There we go. All right. So our 30 amp. So these are nice and. Straight, you don't need a whole lot.

Of wire showing. You just wanna make sure that it's kind of nice and straight, twisted a little bit here, because you'll see inside there, we don't have a whole lot of room once that slides in, so we don't wanna, we don't want any exposed on the outside of that. So, we're gonna go into the 30 amp. Which is our left side. And we are gonna open this up just a little more.

Just wanna make sure I don't get any frayed wires sticking out. There we go. Everything is in. It's nice and tight. Good old guy in there.

That is a good Solid connection. We'll leave that hanging out because our next one is the roof air conditioner. We're gonna go to the 20 amp fuse on that one right here, and there's a little 20 right in front of it. We are now gonna hook these into our Corresponding. So that supplies this whole bus bar.

For that, so we can put all our white wires down there. And then we're gonna do the same with this on the back side. There we go. Right. So, once we have that, the next one is our 20 amp roof air conditioner.

Which is this one right here. So we'll bring this down. Just one. I don't have a lot of room, so I'm gonna. Go through there.

My next one started. So these little pinch things are. They're nice. They're hard to get back out. I know Here's my connector on the bottom side, so I'm gonna run this right up into the back.

So we had a 20 amp. So now we're gonna connect our neutral. And what you find is in your main cord coming in, the neutral is gonna be the green, and when you get your smaller 120 Romax, uh, it will be this copper wire. This one's gonna go in here. And the right ground, it's right to.

A bus bar All right. 2 down, 64 to go. And I think before we pop that in, we're just gonna leave it cuz we might need the the room in there, so the next one we have. Is the Microwave And that is a. 15 and 1515 and 15.

So it's gotta be a 15 amp. We have the microwave and the kitchen are together. So we look back here. And we have a generator left. We have the outlets.

We have the kitchen. And I would say, since both of these are coming here, the one is the kitchen outlets, and this is our microwave. back here, we're gonna push these in. microwave up first. There we go.

These are really stiff wires, so you just gotta be patient with them. Bend them in the right direction, get the right angle. And tighten them down really, really good. No gap in any of that. Number 2, then has our Now we need to put our Neutral on our grounds in.

Right, 123. So we want to get into 4. Yeah. I am going to swap out my. Here we go.

We're gonna use this one. A little smaller, it's just a little bit wide for what I was trying to get into. To work with, kept hitting the other sides and stuff. This is gonna work a lot nicer. So there we just had something.

Which is a gremlin again, if you look at this. This wire we put in there, we tightened it down, and I just moved it a little bit and that snapped right off. So I gotta be careful about some of these things and how brittle they can get. We should have enough wire here to pull this out. Here we go, strip this down.

So, we got 2 of these in. We've got 3 wires yet to go in with the addition of that new one in the back. Now, the old bus bar had 8 locations. This new one has one center hole, uh not that basically holds the whole thing in, so I'm not gonna put a unit in there. So we're gonna have to daisy chain one of these, meaning put two of them in.

But let me pull these over, so you can see a little bit of what I'm talking about. Get it up off the ground. So you can see. Right here, this one here. I was thinking that maybe that one was a spot for the main one to come in, but when you loosen that up, the whole bus bar loosens up.

So, obviously, it's, it's not designed for that. So, what we're gonna have to do is daisy chain a couple of these, um, as we, we put them in. And so we see in the back, we're gonna have the The back has 3 extras left, so that that one has 12345678. And our main one has 7. So, we're just a little bit short on those.

That's good and tight. Can get these out of the way so we're able to work on them. So now we have The 2 coming in here. We have whatever the gin 15 is, and then I'm assuming this is the furnace that comes with. That one We have 2 blocks.

And we'll straighten this out just a little bit more, get that through those holes. Pushing that many wires through a pinch. Colder is never a fun thing. Push these out of the way. So what we're gonna do is daisy chain our 3rd to the.

Jam, so we'll do the. Buss bar first. Here we go. Those 2 are in. Now we need to put in our 2 whites.

This one gets the daisy check. That's this. Which goes to our outlet over there. So we're gonna bring that through. On the last open holes.

To this back a little bit. You have enough space. Oh, that's why I'm down underneath. You see, we got a little bit of a rat's nest, but There is One more connection down there to make. We're gonna go around this.

Move that over. So this can get in. So that bottom lug. Make sure that that's good tight. Yup.

All right. Finally. Now for the last 2. That looks good. All right.

I'm gonna take these now. I'm just gonna Get the wires Down So we can get the Bar we have our 30 amp first. It's in the bar and makes the connection. And 3 There we've got all our 120 in. We've come over to the.

Converter Brings it over to this side here. So now what we've got left to do is to bring in our 12 volt. The first one that we have is our. 12 volt positive. For our converter.

What this is gonna do is come up. And we can see our ground right here. And are positive right here. We're gonna need an Alan wrench for that one. So, the next step is to hook up, this is gonna be to our converter right here, and this gives us a leg.

To that, and then we're gonna hook up each one of our individual 12 volts. Power for the lights, refrigerator mode, and everything else. We'll get a lug nut. Uh, Allen wrench, to be able to put those in. That's a little different type of a connection that we're gonna use and put those two in, and uh we'll put our 12 volt on the bus bar.

So, we've got our Allen wrenches here. Just need to find out which one actually fits. Looks like we might have. There we go. OK, that is.

All right, so I'm gonna take a look at this. We need to come in to Ground white right here. Alright, and this one's gonna be our. Positive, it shows here that this has the capability. Of adding a battery disconnect.

Right into. Here Shows that this uh DC disconnect option for it, but we are just gonna put this in to the regular. Buss there. I think I'm gonna do this from the other side. Get my leg out of the way, and that'll also give me the ability to work on a couple of these butt spices as well.

Since this is a little tight. Coming in from the side. I'm gonna. Oh OK. No.

This one we don't have as much room to play with. It looks like we don't need as much. Sure, nice when things go easy. All right. So now we got all our 120 hooked up.

We got our converter hooked up that should give us power to the front. The next thing we need to do, As as we said before, we're doing. Nothing with these two, so the 1st 2. 30 amps we're gonna leave alone. Then we're going to.

Take our Negative wires. Right here. And the ones we look at. We're concerned about these. Here these are all.

Pigtail together. These with the little black on it tell me that they are. 12 volt positive. So I'm gonna get these all unwound, pull them back a little more. And so what I'm gonna do with these.

I'm gonna take and use a bus bar. I don't like them. That they're just sitting there. Twist tied together. So what I'm gonna do is I bought this 12 volt bus bar.

And it's just at an automotive store. And I'm gonna Bring the main one. From the backside and hook to here. And then we're gonna do a little bit of a quite that big. Let's see what size we've got here.

That should work. This is just a nice little crimple that I've had for years. It's got the different size, and it really does a nice pinch. You can get the You little straggler, it looks like that. It's in right socket.

That way I know I got the metal good and pinched. Put this in. I think what I'll do. I'm not gonna use the screwgun on this. I'm gonna You could use forks on this as well.

The package I had did not have forks in it. That would probably make this a little easier, but this is gonna give us a great connection. Run it through here. So here we go with that. I'm gonna take a lead wire from here, go into my Um, My ground From the inside where I had it beforehand.

And then uh what we're gonna do with each one of the positive ones. As we are going to take our. Wires coming off and I'm gonna come back around here and see if I can. Stay in the shot this time. Each one of these wires coming off here, we wanna find.

Where the first one is at. So I would imagine the 1st 2345. You're gonna come off right at the. All right, so that's our first. We're not using the reds, we're using these.

So I think we might be able to get by with just this. All right, so our next Well He is We are gonna use a watertight heat shrink butt connector. Since each one of these came in, the old one, it went up and it screwed into the bus bus bar type thing on the 12 volt system. This one I've got, these are all soldered in, so a nice connection, but I wanna make sure I got a good connection between this piece coming in and this right here. So, we're gonna use These and I believe we're at the blue.

Um, Red has 10 pieces. The blue is a 14 gauge wire, which I believe this. is we're gonna check to make sure. Nope, looks a little bit bigger than that. And that's a little tight.

So we're gonna go to 1012. Which is our yellow one. That does a much better slide in. It's so negative. It was gonna straighten this out.

Allows me to get that all the way in there. There we go, and then user. First one coming in from here. And again, 2 crimps. And now all I have to do is take a heat gun, shrink wrap that.

According to the directions. And it creates a watertight seal. I'm gonna do that with each one of these 12 volt components. So it then we'll put the fuse in, that's according with that. And all the fuses we had in the old ones were And so, the last thing we're gonna do.

After we put all that in, I'm gonna take this busbar after it's got all the stuff in it, and my negative, I'm gonna bring it back down and I'm gonna mount it to the inside, and we can see. That This is gonna be just a little bit smaller. Then the profile of our old one. And so, we're actually gonna go and frame in, and if I look at that piece, so I'm gonna add a piece to the The bottom of it, but I should be able to put trim work. So I'm gonna just put one of these.

I'm just gonna cut down a 2 by 4. And I'm gonna shim the inside of this. To see where this is gonna fit. That actually looks like one. Let's get it back in Here we go.

I'll cut that down the size and I know they gotta cut the top. A little bit. And then I'll just do some trim where that open area is at. So, again, before we plug this in and fire everything up, I'm gonna get Steve Albright in here. Um, we'll have all the 12 volt hooked up.

We'll be able to verify that our, our new converter is providing. Uh, it should be 13.6 since that battery is, is very, very low right now and uh everything else works inside. So one of the things that you gotta do, we'll, we'll finish all this up, but I just want to wrap it up saying you really have to kind of evaluate what your level of expertise is. Um, you know, you can't do electrical wiring in a home, you have to be bonded, you have to be certified. And, uh, you know, when we start getting into this, it's, it's best to leave it up to a certified electrician for the final.

Um, you know, I just did a lot of work here initially that everything's unplugged. I know the battery's unplugged, nothing is gonna happen. And, uh, you know, some of the labor work that you saw with all those wires and, and things, you know, um, you're able to do some of the stuff yourself. But make sure you understand your abilities and don't go past them. Um, you know, otherwise you can get in trouble, but it is fairly easy to swap out some of these components.

Um, you know, the 12 volt is very, it's low voltage, so you, you don't have to worry too much about it. But again, I want to verify everything is connected. Um, one of the things you see in cheaper trailers. Is that trying to save labor, trying to save money on the units that they have a tendency to, to put in a lot of extra wire and use cheaper stuff, you know, gang things together, twist lock like we saw on the other stuff. So, um, you know, that's where you start getting into gremlins.

And if you have the ability to take them out, do it the right way. So with that, we've got a new converter, we're gonna get somebody in to verify and make sure everything is working correctly.