Deteriorated Insulation and resulting bare wires

When working around your coach be ever on the lookout for potential problems. One such is deteriorated insulation on electrical wires. The high heat of the engine compartment creates a harsh environment in which to survive. Try as they might converters additions/modifications and aftermarket products added will not always be up to par to survive.

Witness a few bare wires at the trailer wiring junction block as found. Rolling the wire between two fingers resulted in it all crumpling off.

JIM :cool:

Is it engine heat for sure? From what I can see from the pics, it almost looks more like the heat damage from an overloaded circuit?? What do you think?

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Originally Posted by Mark3101

Is it engine heat for sure? From what I can see from the pics, it almost looks more like the heat damage from an overloaded circuit?? What do you think?

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Agree with Mark on this.

Me three.

I don't think there is circuit protection on the individual toad wiring on my Liberty. Further, I am not sure the wires in my coach which should be like Jim's are big enough to carry the load of all the lights on a stacker trailer.

When I wired the H2 for towing I purposely eliminated the marker lights across the top at the front and rear and all the side marker lights because I did not have a clue about the capacity of the circuits.

In my first coach I created my own toad lighting system and used relays to carry the loads and heavy gauge wire. Despite my efforts to size stuff big enough the receptacle for the plug was only capable of handling 16 or 14 gauge wiring so it could be easy to overload something. I ended up cutting a number of strands out of my wiring to make it fit in the receptacle connections. I think if a big load is to be put on the trailer or toad connections everything should be upsized and the plugs and receptacles for semi-trailers should be used.

Sure looks like heating due to a high resistance connection in combination with high current flow. Often times, due to aging and the consequential corrosion at terminations/crimps, high resistance connections result, causing this type of insulation burn. If possible, I would also examine the rest of the wire by removing the loom on the harness from the point it exits the Prevost junction box and goes down to the tow plug. If the insulation on that wire is molten anywhere else, then it is likely an indication of excessive current along the entire wire. If that is the only place the insulation shows signs of degredation, then I stand by my first comment above (corroded terminal resulting in a high resistance area, causing the insulation and wire to heat up and burn the insulation like the pictures above depict). Hope this helps.
Ben
Coach Worx

I cut 10" off the cable end and stripped off the outer cover and renewed the terminal connectors. The cable at the cut off point was as new. The wires correspondingly across the terminal strip are in as new condition.
You may think it was an over load of current and or high resistance at the connector. I think it was the wrong kind of insulation, and given enough time will happen again.


JIM

My Royale came with a unit for the trailer/toad lights that used the turn/stop & taillights circuits to close relays to power the lights with a heavy duty fused circuit.
While at Desert West Coach in Phenoix the unit quit. I replaced it with a much less expensive unit from a trailer hitch company. A Tech at Desert West told me that the Prevost wiring on my 99 chassis would not hold up to power the toad lights. His explaintion to me said the additional lights of a toad would overload the wiring.

Has anyone had an experience with the new "Wireless" system for a tow vehicle lighting? It seems it uses a plug in sending unit at the bus and lights that can be mechanically mounted or magnetically mounted or whatever mounting for the rear of the toad. I have no idea how the toad lights are powered but, gee, just going to rear of bus and removing the sending unit seems sort of easy. I think I saw a price tag for about $140 for the sending unit and 2 lights.

After the hassels with prior toad lighting and diodes etch. When I got my latest toad I checked out the space in my tail lights and found enough room to drill a hole from the trunk side into each housing and mount a new tail light socket that houses a tail light and stop light double bulb and ran a wire harness under the car to the connector fitting mounted below the license plate in front. The usual bus to toad cord with connectors Camping world sells this system as one of their choices. It's been working well for a couple of years now.

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Originally Posted by rahangman

Has anyone had an experience with the new "Wireless" system for a tow vehicle lighting? It seems it uses a plug in sending unit at the bus and lights that can be mechanically mounted or magnetically mounted or whatever mounting for the rear of the toad. I have no idea how the toad lights are powered but, gee, just going to rear of bus and removing the sending unit seems sort of easy. I think I saw a price tag for about $140 for the sending unit and 2 lights.

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We use the wireless tow lights and love it! No muss/no fuss!