Camper Wiring -- Isolate Truck Battery

[VTesar]

I posted this in the 3rd Gen forum; but thought I should try here as well. Apologize for redundancy.



I just had a Bigfoot camper installed on my 2003, 3500 ETH DEE 4X4. I was told, by the camper service department, that the trailer tow wiring took care of isolating the truck batteries when the vehicle wasn't running; however, that isn't true. I could find myself with a dead truck battery if I camped in one spot for any length of time. The camper service department, later, said they can't install the solenoid or isolator because it would void Dodge's warranty if they cut into the wiring ahead of the normal junction under the bed.



Has anyone installed an isolator or solenoid battery separator on a 2003? If so, where/how are you making your connection to isolate the truck batteries from the camper battery at startup and while the truck is turned off? Is the starter 'run' position an option? Something better?

 

[jrobinson2]

I've never seen the PDC on an '03 but on my '99 I mounted a radio shack relay and a 30 amp circuit breaker on the firewall to the side of the clutch reservoir. I removed the "40 amp trailer" fuse from the PDC and used fully insulated . 250 quick slide terminals and # 10 wire to connect the rear PDC fuse terminal to the breaker, to the relay, then back to the front fuse terminal in the PDC. For ignition power to the relay I used the fuse tap on #8 fuse inside the cab that feeds my A pillar gauges. I stored the original 40 amp fuse in the "spare" location that only has one terminal in the PDC so if I have any problems I can unhook my wires and reinstall the fuse. Also the radio shack relay has the same terminal configuration as the factory PDC relays and will work as a spare in an emergency. I used the 30 amp breaker because I think the quick slides may heat at 40 amps and the Radio shack relay is only rated at 30 amps. My 8' pop-up camper only uses 12 amps with everything on so this works well for me, total cost was less than 15. 00.

Jared

 

[VTesar]

Thanks for the response. I was also planning to add some circuit breakers and decrease the size of fuse.

 

[Prairie Dog]

Instead of the radio shack relay, try using a solenoid style relay from NAPA. These look just like the old Ford starter solenoids but are rated for continuous duty (appx $20). They can handle far more than 40 amps. I had one of these in my 93 CTD for 8 years and it never failed.

 

[jrobinson2]

I had one of the continuous duty solenoid switches your talking about on hand when I wired mine and would definitely use the larger relay if I was running new larger wire directly from the batteries to the trailer connector, I used the smaller relay because it was easy to mount close to the PDC and it's heavy enough for the factory wire, also I was a bit concerned about the amp draw of the larger switch on my already over loaded ignition power source. I mostly wanted a quick easy way to break the circuit without cutting the factory wiring at all and replacing the fuse with the relay and breaker worked great and got my camper on the road in less than 20 minutes.



Jared