Dead in the Water

Jayco should be able to send you a wiring diagram.

Thanks for the input. It looks like its the solenoid that runs wiring from fuse box and wiring to I believe my house battery. I put in an inline fuse where it fried near the battery and I started the rig- blown fuse. Tested wires all over the place. Changed the fuse then disconnected the wire running from fuse box to solenoid where another wire is running to back of coach- I believe to house battery. When I did that rig started right up.

The wiring and harness attached under the hood is aftermarket so it must be from Jayco when they installed house battery.

check the fuse box for the main fuse ,,if this fuse blows or trips nothing will work,,believe me I know If you cant find the box look in your owners manual and it will help.

check the fuse box for the main fuse ,,if this fuse blows or trips nothing will work,,believe me I know

Sounds like a dead short.
The smell is probably that of boiled battery acid.

Check the starter main lead. It may have shorted to the chassis somewhere. Starter lead does not have a fusible link (at least my E350 doesn't). Its just about the only think that will dead-short and damage the battery. Everything else has fuses or fusible links.

Well, actually, it could be the starter. I had a starter kill a battery once. Out running errands, stopped at a store, did my thing, came out to move on, inserted the key, turned it, and everything went black. It killed the battery so dead it wouldn't even register the LCD mileage display on the dash board.

I do hope you got the polarity right, flipping that could get really expensive. Assuming that is ok, you can only look around for the cause. The bad smell is likely melted/burned insulation somewhere. Might also be the incinerated carcass of whatever varmint chewed the wrong wire.
This will take some serious hands-on wire tracing.

Maybe your battery isolator solenioid fried. It is very common. This gizmo switches the alternator from charging the chassis battery to the coach battery. They look like this. Look around for it. You can replace it yourself.


If you want something more robust, get a solid state version that looks like these.


The round mechanical one in my first rig burned up after a few years, almost destroying some nearby chassis wiring. I replaced it with a solid state version which lasted well over 20 years. I sold the rig with it working well. You can see it in the lower right.


I should locate the one on my latest rig. If it's the round thingy, I should replace it with a blue thingy.

I checked- positive and negative connections are correct spots. What I dont understand is the foul odor and smoke and now nothing works. I turn the key and I dont even get the "clicking" sound- no interior lights etc...

Any chance the new battery was installed with the connections reversed?

Of course, battery could be bad, DOA.

There are probably also some fusible links in the wiring, but I'd have to go look for them and can't do that till later.