Hurricane Electrical Connection

[JimNCheryl Domenoe]

I am having issues with my Hurricane heater.  The problem is this: One day after a flame out and inability to relight the Hurricane, I heard the circulation pump running.  The remote was in the off position and all three thermostats were either off or set below the coach interior temperature.  I looked at the control panel and the Power On, Burner On, Remote Open and Water Pump On lights were lit.  I turned the rocker switch on the control panel to the off position.  The lights dimmed a bit but stayed lit, but the Voltage Fault light also came on.  I could not get the pump to stop running until I disconnected the power lead from the control board.  Reattaching the power lead did not cause the lights to come on or start the pump again.  This same scenario repeated itself again at a later time.

I called Rixen's and explained the problem. They believe the problem is in the power lead somewhere between the source and the Hurricane unit.  The problem is, I cannot find out where the connection to the batteries is.  I tried to trace the wire, but it is in loom by itself which then enters a larger loom.  I tried to find it among the many, many looms but I felt that I would have to cut all of the looms apart and then look into each of them to find the correct wire.  The wiring diagram from Hurricane shows that this power lead connects directly to the battery with a fuse inline. 

My questions is, does anyone know specifically where this wire connects somewhere near the batteries?  I crawled under and the coach near the battery compartment and found a large number of wires in that area. Unfortunately, some are nearly impossible to see so I was hoping to narrow down my search.  I couldn't see any wires that had a fuse attached.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Steve Huber Co-Admin]

Jim,
IMHO your best (and probably easiest) approach is to run a new wire. The location of wire looms will make it very difficult to ID the existing wire. That said, strongly suggest you run an external wire first to verify that it solves the problem (before you spend time under the coach routing the new wire).
Steve

[Bill Lampkin]

Looking at the wiring diagram here in Coach Assist, it looks like power to the Hurricane (Heat) is via 12v circuit breaker #43 in the front run bay. And if I read you correctly, all seems to reset to normal when you remove the 12v power lead from the control board, do I have that right? I'd check CB #43 to see if power is removed when the CB is tripped (open). A quick test would be to remove the output wire from CB# 43 to see if that removes power from your control board. Good luck!

[David T. Richelderfer]

A device shown in the youtube link below might come in handy for this job...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Yzk_RqNvo

[Steve Huber Co-Admin]

Jim,
Make sure that CB43 is a 30a breaker. Sheet 2 of the wiring diagram shows it as 30a but sheet 3 shows it as 15a. The Hurricane needs the 30a capacity. An easy way to check if CB43 is faulty is to remove the wires from CB47 (30a for Pwr seat) and replace them with the Hurricane wire(s) from CB43. If still no joy, suggest you run an external wire from CB43 to see if the existing wire has an issue.
Steve

[JimNCheryl Domenoe]

OK, so I did find that the circuit #43 did feed the Hurricane.  The voltage at the source is the same as the voltage at the Hurricane.  I will try running another wire, but I don't know that it will make any difference since I am not losing any voltage on the existing wire.  It is a 30A breaker but when I checked it with an ohmmeter, the reading was jumping around.  I tapped on it and the ohm value changed by quite a bit.  Might be in need of replacement.

If it isn't sending full voltage all of the time, this may be the cause of the voltage fault.  On the other hand, I can't understand why the system would energize when the switch is off, unless the switch is faulty.  That's seems to be the only other variable in my feeble mind.

[Bill Lampkin]

Might think about replacing the CB instead of the wire.....

[Eric Maclean]

Jim
If the pump was running all the time there must have been power and ground available to operate the pump motor .
However if the pump it is running when it shouldn't be and the control board is shown indicator lights which shouldn't be showing.

 reading your fault description  I would  be looking for a faulty ground At the control board or burner box causing a back feed and all sorts of erroneous indicator lights and compromised operation.
I think what happens when you removed power everything resets and appears to be ok untill any load is placed on the system such as the burner motor or pump motor at which time the poor ground  causes a back feed.
Before I condemned either the power feed wire or ground wire I would do a volt drop test on both sides with a 5 amp load applyed to help show any resistance issues in the wiring.

Hope this is of some help
Eric