Practical troubleshooting your RV, 101 #1

[hippieforever3]

Another useful tip.

I've got quite a lot of experience troubleshooting electronics but I
have to admit these BBs had me on the ropes. No diagrams, wrong
diagrams and previous owner mods were killers.

I just recently broke down and bought a "clamp" ammeter. Sears has a
nice VOM w/ clamp ammeter for around $70.

Good god ... how much this helps. Voltage can be present even with
bad contacts and in some cases will show up even if the circuit
you're tracing is open on one direction. (Coming from the back.) But
current is like water, it's either flowing or not and if its flowing
its got to be going somewhere.

The clamp requires some work sometimes because you can only "clamp"
one direction of the circuit so you have to separate wires sometimes
and the clamp is a little large maybe requiring "jumpers" but it sure
clears up mysteries like "flakey" relay coils fast.

Don't leave home without one,
GPSGary