battery hook-up question

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sally_vacuum

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Jan 30, 2011
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Can someone help?  We just bought a 1984 Travel Craft for the princely sum of $1,500.  But contrary to what you may be thinking, it looks like a $1,600 RV so what a lucky deal for us, huh?  Anyway, it came with one battery (cheapo) in the tray and a bunch of wires hanging loose.  My question is, can someone show me a simple diagram for connecting two new batteries?  And before you ask me why we aren't just driving this thing across the scales at our local scrap metal dealer, let me say that it only has 20,688 miles on the clock, the 454 runs great and as far as I can tell, all of the systems work except the rear AC (it doesn't even make a sound, so I think it may be something very simple).  The body looks like all 20,000 miles were put on it by Mr. Magoo and it has the mid 80's ugly brown everything inside but I think it will work for us.  My wife is going to learn to drive her first behemoth and she doesn't have to worry about doing any damage.  She can only add character at this point.

Any help and or pointers would be greatly appreciated.
 
Sally

Looks to me like you got a sweet deal. It will be a project I'm sure, and older coach is.
I searched the web for Travelcraft and found all kinds from "C" to "A" class and all points between. Can you post some pictures of your new coach.

I love following these project RV's.

BTW: I'd rather have the Dirty Brown interior than the dirty Powder Blue interior that was so popular in the 80's.
 
Typically you would have one battery for the engine (Chassis) and one for the "house". Since you are missing a battery, I would guess those dangling wires go to the house battery. You will have to figure out which are the positives and which are the negatives, though.  Any color coding on them, e.g. black, white or red?

There is no standard RV wiring, so there will be some guesswork involved. Is your Travelcraft on a Ford, GM, or Dodge chassis? All three were used at various times, and the wiring can be different.
 
I would not trust the color of any wiring that is just dangling to be the correct color for positive vs negative. I would use a meter to determine which wire has zero (or close to it) resistance to ground/chassis.

Frank
 
FrankNSharon said:
I would not trust the color of any wiring that is just dangling to be the correct color for positive vs negative. I would use a meter to determine which wire has zero (or close to it) resistance to ground/chassis.

Frank
Click to expand...

Frank, your technique would certainly work, and make sense for determining where the large battery cables go, but for small innocuous wires it might not prove anything. 

Suppose someone wired in a small aftermarket appliance directly to the battery and ran both the power and ground wire directly to the battery.  It might be difficult to determine which is which.  It might be difficult to even determine that the two constituted a working pair of wires.  None of the wires in this case would have continuity to ground.  You wouldn't automatically want to put any, or all, small wires on the positive terminal (or the negative terminal).

I never like to run any unlabeled, or non easily recognizable wires, directly to the battery.
 
I'm curious does your RV look anything like Randy Quaid's RV in Christmas Story?
Good luck on your electrical system.  Get yourself a Volt/ohm meter if you don't already have one.  I've found electrical problems have logical solutions.  Sometimes they just take awhile to figure them out.
 
Porky, agreed - I guess my point was don't assume anything when working on wiring that is dangling.
 
FrankNSharon said:
Porky, agreed - I guess my point was don't assume anything when working on wiring that is dangling.
Click to expand...

Now that, I can agree with.

Just remember, if you have a 50/50 chance, you'll be wrong 80% of the time. :D
 
Thanks for the help.  Here are some answers to your queries:

It is a Class A 32 footer on a Chevy Chassis (P30 ?).

It makes Randy Quaid's look like a show coach. 

We will put some pictures up this week since words really can't describe it.  We are up for a do-it-yourself challenge.  Our only concern is that RV parks will turn us away unless we pre-register.  If they don't, you can look for us in the back row!  ;D
 
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