Plugged in or not?
I'm sure this has been asked before, but we're leaving shortly and I don't have time to do a real search. I've had other RV's never a truck/5'ver combo. When I went out this morning I noticed that...
Forum Discussion
Allworth wrote:
Dodge - who knows? Test it. Connect a 12V test light between 11 o'clock and 5 o'clock on the truck outlet (facing the truck) with the switch off. If it lights up, no isolation. If dark then isolated.
Based on my experience, I'd put Dodge/Ram into the "not isolated" category as well. I've towed 5th wheels with 1996, 2002 and 2011 Ram 3500 duallies, and none have had battery isolators. Pin #4 in the Pollak 7-blade connectors has always been hot on the truck side, ignition on or not.
When we're staying overnight and not unhitching the truck, I'll generally leave the truck plugged to the trailer when we're on shore power. In effect, the truck batteries are in parallel with the RV batteries so are being charged off the RV's power converter just like 2 more batteries in the RV's battery bank. I've had multiple Todd Engineering converters fail way back when (I've never lost a Progressive Dynamics which is what I've had since 2000), but I've always had them fail "dead" - never trying to feed 120VAC into the 12VDC side. Could it happen? I suppose it might, theoretically, but so could a direct meteor strike on the 5th wheel while we're sleeping in it. It's not something I spend time worrying about.
Rusty
