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jgonzales11's avatar
jgonzales11
Explorer
Mar 02, 2017

Starting battery issue '90 Pace Arrow

Riddle me this...

I have a '90 Fleetwood Pace Arrow. The house batteries are housed under the hood and for some reason, my house batteries were wired (by a previous owner?) to start the engine. This is bad, obviously. I purchased a brand new 750 cold cranking amps (925 amp) starting battery; however, when I remove connection to the house batteries and connect directly to the starting battery I get lights inside, but it won't turn over. When I try to start it again, everything in the dash stops working and I have to disconnect and reconnect the battery just to get the lights to work again, and it still won't turn over the engine.

Ideas??

Does this configuration require that the starting battery be wired into the house batteries for assist?

7 Replies

  • Thanks to everyone else--lots of great feedback. Very appreciated! I'm troubleshooting it today.
  • @ CharlesinGA Yeah, reversed that in the post title, but had it right in the post, so obviously knew how to write it, making your comment a waste and obnoxious.
  • When I read the title, I thought, geez, a 90 foot motorhome, how crazy can it get.......... Then I realized it was the year............

    Charles
  • Another thought over night is a dropped wire to the starter on Chev or the starter relay on Ford.

    Check to see if you have one lead going to battery control center and one going to the starter(Chev) or starter relay(Ford)
    Fleetwood normally used a charge relay and not diode based isolators.
  • I agree, was most likely a rig to the isolator. You should not be getting interior house lights off vehicle battery. There is a splice somewhere.
  • What chassis is the rig on? Chev or Ford.
    I would start by varifing that the new chassis battery has a ground wire that goes to the engine block. Mine goes to a stud on the drivers side of the manifold behind the AC compressor.
    You could use a jumper cable between the negative battery post and the engine.
    I also installed a short ground wire jumper between the coach and house batteries.
    Fords are set up a little different on the positive side, but still needs the ground wire to the engine.
  • Somebody to lazy or stupid to fix it right messed with it. Probably the isolator or the combiner died and he put enough together to get it to "work" and walked away.

    Seen this before. It usually takes us a half a day to figure out in either boats or RVs. Same - Same.

    Matt