Northland Polar 990 and F350

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Arktisk

Member
Joined
Oct 17, 2021
Posts
11
Location
PNW
Hi folks. I figure I might toss a formal greeting somewhere later since I am pressed on a problem on a new purchase. My question is regarding an old Northland Camper that I just bought yesterday.
My issue is electrically related. My truck has the connection shown below and the camper has the outdated 6 wire interface.
I thought I would splice together a new harness in the NAPA parking lot. I put my snips across the old harness on the camper and cut down. I heard a click like I popped a fuse or something and found that I suddenly had no power IN the camper any longer (off the camper battery). Any idea what I fried? All fuses are good. Breakers did not flip and I flipped them manually just in case. Where else would I look? Nothing smelled of burned wires.
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Can't help with your problem, but want to welcome you to the Forum. I'm sure some of our dc electrical experts will soon log on to help.
 
The larger wire (light blue) is your battery charge wire that will charge the battery when the truck is connected. There is most likely a fuse or circuit breaker where the battery charge wire is connected at or close to the Camper Battery. If it's a fuse (probably 30 amp) then you blew the fuse when cutting all the wires at the same time. If it is a circuit breaker, it may be a manual reset with a small button to reset the circuit breaker. Some circuit breakers are auto reset, and will reset themselves after they cool down from the short circuit.
If you haven't already figured the wiring colors out, typically the white is the ground, brown is tail lights, green is right turn signal, and yellow is left turn signal.
 
Thanks to the two of you!
Rich; I have yet to sort the tail light wiring and such yet. I got a bit confused with this 7 pin RV plug if I am honest.
On the 7 pin plug itself (that will go into my truck) it has code on the inside for "building the harness". Excuse the lousy crimp job. This was temporary!
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What is TM? (Left pin in that picture)
Do I leave "brake controller" empty? I figure AX is running lights, but do those top orange markers get their power from tail light wire?
Not sure where the blue wire you referenced would wire into the 7 pin (Where the camper gets power off the truck). That is a neat feature.

I am still having a heck of a time getting the camper to run off of its own power. I got busy redoing seams and only took the time to trace wires from the batt to the control panel. Is it possible the power center tripped something internally? Or perhaps I fried it? It has a 30A breaker labeled "Main" as shown in the previous post. It does not trip. I will continue to dig but if a hot wire goes into the panel I am at a loss. I have no idea what is going on inside that breaker panel/converter/thing...
 
I should add:
The only other fuse I have found on the camper is an in-line unit here off the batt.
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It checks out good. Not blown.
 
Thanks to the two of you!
Rich; I have yet to sort the tail light wiring and such yet. I got a bit confused with this 7 pin RV plug if I am honest.
On the 7 pin plug itself (that will go into my truck) it has code on the inside for "building the harness". Excuse the lousy crimp job. This was temporary!
View attachment 149653
What is TM? (Left pin in that picture)
Do I leave "brake controller" empty? I figure AX is running lights, but do those top orange markers get their power from tail light wire?
Not sure where the blue wire you referenced would wire into the 7 pin (Where the camper gets power off the truck). That is a neat feature.

I am still having a heck of a time getting the camper to run off of its own power. I got busy redoing seams and only took the time to trace wires from the batt to the control panel. Is it possible the power center tripped something internally? Or perhaps I fried it? It has a 30A breaker labeled "Main" as shown in the previous post. It does not trip. I will continue to dig but if a hot wire goes into the panel I am at a loss. I have no idea what is going on inside that breaker panel/converter/thing...
The circuit breakers in the left side of your power center is the 120 volt AC side of the power center. They are not involved with the 12 volt part of your Camper except to provide power to the Converter. The fuses on the right side are the 12 volt DC side of the power center.
You need to follow the wiring up into the camper. Looking at your first picture, it looks like you have 6 wires, white, black, brown, green, yellow, and blue. Your second picture with the 7 way plug shows 7 different colors including a red wire. Did you add a section of wire onto the original camper wiring you cut?
Here's a picture of how to wire the 7 way to match your trucks plug:
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7-Way-RV-Style-Trailer-Plug-Wiring-Diagram-2.png

The TM you asked about is the tail lights/clearance lights. Aux is the battery charge line from the truck. You may have backup lights so that will go to the center pin. But verify where that light blue wire goes. Looking at the size of it I would say it is the battery charge wire and it may have a circuit breaker somewhere such as under the sink inside the camper.
 
Thanks.
I actually bought 12' of 7 pin wire in a loom from NAPA. So those are the wires you are seeing there in that picture with the 7pin rather than anything from the camper.
 
I'd be looking for a circuit breaker like this one. When I had my Arctic Fox Camper, there was one of these under the sink area.
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I think I found it. So did I fry it? I have yet to pull it off the wall to see if there is some way to "flip" it.
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I traced the "blue wire" which became a red wire before entering the camper and did not see any sort of fuse between it and the batt.

This old style 6 pin things are confusing. Certainly green and yellow are R/L. The gauge of the blue and white on here makes me think ground and the 12v charger. The other two wires are black and brown. Brown taillights? What is black if that large gauge white is ground?

I know I could shred looms apart and check wires, but figured I would check in here first and utilize knowledge.
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Brown should be your tail lights/clearance lights. The black is probably your backup lights if the Camper has them. Check the tail lights to see if you have backup lights. One way I test trailer camper circuits is with a battery charger. Connect the ground lead of the battery charger to the white wire, connect the positive lead of the battery charger to one of the three colored wires(yellow, green, brown) to test and verify the circuit.
That circuit breaker you found should is either an auto reset breaker, or a manual reset breaker. If manual reset there will be a small button on the side or end of it to reset it. With a test light or multimeter see if you have voltage to both sides of it.
 
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Aha! I should have thought of just running the wires off a batt. The battery is right above the pigtail on this camper so I simply used wire I had laying around to make the distance between each wire on the camper's pigtail. I did not have to touch the white ground wire to anything though for the tail lights to light up out back. Is the system just grounded on the camper itself?
The camper does have backup lights and the guy I bought the unit from mentioned they did not work. Upon opening up more of the loom on the camper I see why....the black wire is cut off. Not a big deal to me anyway. I am sure they are so dim they will not do much. I plan to add flood lights to a switch for backing up.

As for the breaker that was found under the sink:
I checked both posts there and had zero voltage. I could not feel any reset on it so I pulled it off the wall and do not see any way of flipping it back "on". Seemingly no switch or button or anything on it. Was this a cheapo unit that was a "one-and-done"?
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I really appreciate the quick responses!
 
If you don't have power at either post of that breaker, it's not the breaker's fault. A tripped breaker should have power at one post but not the other. If both posts are dead, the fault lies somewhere else.
 
There are two types of those breakers. Auto reset, which means it will automatically reset once it cools down. No reset button on it. The manual reset breaker will have a button on it to push in to reset it. Yours appears to be an auto reset breaker. The red wire on your circuit breaker goes back to the harness you cut, so there won't be any power on it because it isn't connected to anything. One of those black wires on the circuit breaker goes to the battery for charging, probably the one with the fuse. I know you said you checked it, but did you check it for continuity with a multimeter? Sometimes a visual inspection will not be enough to see if the fuse is good or not. Even the fuse holder could be faulty.
 
If you don't have a multimeter, get yourself one of these 12 volt test lights. You can actually do quite a bit of troubleshooting with one on 12 volt circuits.
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Maybe I should ask something I thought would be obvious to me. Should the camper be able to run lights, power, etc, when not plugged into the truck and not plugged into shore power? Totally stand alone? The battery in the camper is new.
My assumption is that it should run off the deep cycle battery just on its own, or am I wrong?

Rich I have a multimeter, a cheapo unit, but it has not failed me in almost 15 years :)
 
Yes, you should be able to run all 12 volt lights, water pump, heater, etc. on only the Camper Battery. Anything that requires 120 volt power will need to be connected to a 120 volt power source.
 
Well now......I just decided to start digging into the harnesses and see what went where. Somebody has been in here before adding electric jacks and solar so there was that butchering to contend with. I found a fusable link. 30A Sure enough.
Blown.
After replacement I have stand-alone power!
Funny how something so small can shut it down.

I got the exterior running lights sorted out and working. I think the only thing electrically to sort out is the truck to camper charging in the pigtail.

I have to trace that blue wire...
 
The plot continues. While I have standalone power now I noticed the two outlets in the camper do not work. One is GFI protected and not tripped. I re set it just incase. It appears to be protected on the 12v side by the 10a fuse, as shown in my panel in my first post.

I figure it has to be user error or something. What gives? I checked the two main posts for power on the 12v side and they are good. The 10a fuse is good and I have power going to it.

I plugged back into shore power and the outlets work. Fun.
A tad off topic but thought the truck camper crowd might enjoy. Found a shirt made by Slow Loris
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