No Lights on Dashboard

[Jim_PEI]

Planned to go for maintenance today, and was getting the MH ready yesterday. Tried to start it, worked fine three weeks ago, and wouldn't start. Shortly thereafter, I had no lights at all on the dash. Called Coach Net and they sent a tow truck. Being in a campground with no power up front, my jacks were down and driver left shortly thereafter. We thought batteries were fine, but a boost was suggested. No luck, but dash was flickering, never on very long. Called local business and they wanted $500 plus labour and parts to come 10 minutes away. This morning I left a message at Gulfstream class A section, but have not heard back from them. A buddy was looking under the coach to figure out how to manually lift the electric jacks, when he noticed the ground wire from the battery was loose. As he wiggled it a bit, the bolt broke off. I told him I read a note on this site about checking the ground wire, and we agreed this could be our solution. Cleaned and connected a new bolt and first try, engine started and jacks came up. Let it run for a while and put jacks back down and restarted the coach. All seems perfect now, but what a frustrating two days.

[Chuck v]

Glad you got it sorted out and were able to repair it easily. Yes the collective experiences of the contributors here is a useful knowledge base for other GS owners to access. Thanks for posting this as it may help others in the future.

I am not familiar with your model but most coaches have a provision for manually retracting jacks and slides for just such towing needs. If they are hydraulic, look for a pump handle and manual valve manifold in the power unit in your basement. HWH and PowerGear have helpful manuals on their websites for you to reference.

Of course using a booster or jumping in another battery would have worked in your instance if you followed the universally recommended procedure of connecting the hot lead to the the + post of the coach battery and the negative to the VEHICLE GROUND. This would have exposed the bad ground/no power issue you were having and also allowed the retraction of the jacks...

Good luck going forward, and expect that regular maintenance on any rig approaching a decade in age will help avoid any costly repairs or on the road service.

Chuck

[Jim_PEI]

Thanks Chuck,

I plan to research how to lift the jacks manually in case I have other problems down the road. My jacks are electric.

Glad I was not in a rest stop half way to Florida.

Jim