Electrical Ground Problems

[red_land_baron]

On my 2000 diesel Concourse, I had several house battery problems shortly after I bought it new. Firstly, the batteries would not hold a charge and 12 volt stuff would not work reliably. To make a long story short, when connecting the ground wires to the chassis, the factory people used 'drill screws' and an impact gun to install the grounds. In doing so, they came very close to twisting off the head of the screws. To eliminate this issue, I removed all of those drill screws, re-drilled all of the holes, used a grinder to clean off the undercoating, and re-installed the ground connections using stainless bolts/lock washers/nuts. This eliminated all of my DC problems. There are several connection points. 1) directly inboard of the house batteries, 2) below the generator, and 3) directly above the grey water dump valve. Finally, I spray painted both sides of the connections.

RLB.

[Blue~Go]

That's a good tip. Sort of like with trailers, "it's always a ground problem"

When I made the new connection from the main buss to the chassis, I did similar to you. Used an existing frame hole, cleaned it to bare metal, and then attached a correctly-sized FTZ lug with bolt/washer/nut.

When I add/change things I typically try to run actual ground returns (wires); but I do still have quite a few of the chassis grounds left for original Chinook things.

This reminds me to post about my temporarily mysterious taillight problem...(I'll start a new thread).