Outfitter Apex electrical schematic??

Have you checked the switches below the fridge? My 2011 Apex had three switches there. One was for the outside light, one for everything on the left, one for everything on the right.

Check your private messages. Forum kept rejecting my post.

It might be as simple as tightening the neutral wires on the feed panel. You can check easily with a meter to see if it is the hot feed to the devices, or if it is the neutral return that has failed.

On volts, have one person hold one lead on the neutral bus, or use a jumper, and put the other end into the bottom of a socket. If you now show power, it's the neutral return that is off.

Fixed -- not fixed -- problem?? What became of this?


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Never heard back from this post. Please let us know if you got the problem fixed and, if so, what was the problem?

Been on the road since Friday, so have not worked on finding the problem yet. Thanks for the schematic. I'll start troubleshooting on Tuesday. Lots of things still don't work, and the door lock mechanism broke on Sunday morning, so I had to crawl out a window. More things to fix. TM...

....this is part of our disaster mitigation tool-kit (everyone may want to consider it inside every camper Class A, Class C, Trailer, 5th Wheel, truck camper, etc):

-a set of screw drivers to remove any broken lock from the inside of the camper (on the Outfitter lockset like ours, it is a Phillips screw driver if you ever have to remove the door lock from inside the camper)

-2 fire extinguishers (1 within reach of your cab-over bed) and 1 under the propane stove mounted to the cabinet wall

-in the case of a pop-up camper or truck camper with soft walls: a very reliable knife (like a Ka-Bar) to slice through through the vinyl softwall in seconds to escape, if there is an emergency that precludes you from getting out through the camper's rear door and your cab-over roof hatch is too small to exit through

-an emergency window breaking device in case a propane fire ignites so quickly, you can't get to the rear camper door, nor to the cab-over escape hatch, and you can't negotiate the large dinette window emergency opener

-two 700 to 1000 lumen flashlights (1 in the cabover mounted to the ceiling or, in an emergency velcro device; a second one mounted to the face of a kitchen cabinet)

-1 additional propane detector mounted near your propane lines; 1 additional CO detector mounted near the bed (in addition to the camper 12V system detectors that may not work if your 12V DC system fails (!)

And, in all your vehicles: a seatbelt cutter and emergency window smasher securely mounted to your seat, where you can get to them (ie. if your seatbelt cant be released easily and you find yourself upside down in water, or after an accident your vehicle catches fire).

....sorry...back to the program: electrical 12V issue (I would try Joerg's seemingly easy fix first, for Outfitter owners that have split (left/right) electrical circuits :D)

So you have a 2003 APEX ? ...And you are talking 12 volt power, only ?

I'm not sure what OUTFITTER was doing back then but it is not like they didn't have decades of RV manufacturing experience under their belts so I can't imagine 12 volt loads being anything but 'home-run' (not daisy-chained) and you say that 12 volt items on the port side aren't working. So we are talking "conductors" - - plural. I suppose it is possible that some major trauma occurred under the step to the bed where the wiring bundle crosses to the port side. I would check under there, first, for trauma to _multiple_ conductors.

If there is no problem, there, I can't imagine that only port side wiring got cut somewhere else on the starboard side. What are the odds of that? And then, if it was a problem with the 12 volt bus, what are the odds that only appliances on the port side were affected ?

So, that crossover point sticks out like a sore thumb - - check under there, first. You can unscrew the step so you can inspect it from above.

One thing that doesn't quite add up is that OUTFITTER was wiring lights to a "wall" switch on the port side down near the rear door. You seem indicate that lights on the starboard side are working. Since the wiring for the lights on the starboard side effectively pass through that choke point under the step to get to that switch, I would think the starboard side lights wouldn't be working, either. ...That would tend to send me back to looking for a broken 12 volt bus.

First check to see if power is coming off the buss for _each_ 12 volt load (remove the 12 volt fuse and measure the voltage across the blades). If you get voltage, there, then the conductor is broken somewhere down the line. Note that "broken" implies that the trauma might still be under insulation and might not be visible. The trauma might not be obvious. If you happen to have a DC clamp-on amp meter (not likely, I guess), you could spot check down one of the conductors until you get no current. Once you find one trauma, you are likely at the point of all the trauma.

And one massive final point: When was the last time you checked your house battery !?!? Is even 12 volts coming off the battery ? Since wires to the port side are longer, things on the port side might not work because of increased resistance and a low voltage. Stuff on a 'short tether' might appear to still work while the true problem is the battery! Don't just put a charge on the battery, check the electrolyte levels!!!

A bit off topic but, ...at least back around 2006 (and so maybe, before and after) OUTFITTER's electrician was daisy-chaining 120 volt loads at least sometimes. My camper was significantly customized by OUTIFTTER but it was designed with a wiring harness that was intended for "simple tastes". In my case, the electrician pretty much worked with the harness that brung'im and daisy-chained a lot of stuff. Not illegal or fatal but not a good idea for many reasons.

The first thing I did was to switch my 20amp main cable to appliance use and installed a 30amp hookup and cable to serve as the new main. Then I added any more outlets and appliances I wanted and home-run'd all the 120 volt cables to individual circuit breakers ( I had specified the PROGRESSIVE DYNAMICS 5000 load panel and 45 amp converter in my build but I had overlooked the fact the Caribou harness was a 20amp affair).

Note that if you have multiple appliances on a daisy-chained circuit or otherwise sharing a single circuit breaker, it might appear that, "...every 120 volt appliance on the port side is not working", when in reality it is all related.

My own big electrical brouhaha came on a trip west when our dual fuel water heater appeared to go out en route. I guessed I had left the circuit on at some point during preparation and inadvertently burned out the heater core. When we got to Colorado and I could sit down and do some trouble shooting, I found that the electrical element on the water heater was just fine ! Must be the switch, right ? Wrong ! The switch was fine. Checked the circuit breaker again and moved it a space on the bus - - fine ! So it must be a broken conductor in a cable, right? Too much detail to deal with on a trip so something to save for when we were back home...

So I settled back to enjoy the vacation but being the mental clockwork that I am, I started going over the route of that cable in my mind. I traced it mentally to a point just before the circuit breaker panel... to a GFCI outlet ! I had installed inline GFCI outlets (outlets were much cheaper than dedicated GFCI devices) underneath the seat to protect most of my appliances - - but especially ones filled with water ! Sure enough, I tried resetting one of the twin GFCI outlets in my electrical compartment and it wouldn't reset - - to was dead. GFCI outlets do that sometimes. But all was well again after a short trip to LOWES to get a replacement (...I always carry a replacement, now !).

All of the 12VDC circuits on my 2004 Outfitter Apex 8 are home runs.