Truck camper battery, or lack thereof

Some older TCs use a house battery located under the truck’s hood.

Under the entry stairs?

They are there somewhere.
Most are hidden but always accessible.
Start looking somewhere else like underthings.

What kind and model camper is it?

My last two old Lance truck campers had a small door on the outside to house one battery..

An old truck camper wouldn’t necessarily have its own battery, especially if it’s one of the smaller models.

A good indicator would be, does it have a shore-power cord for 120 volt appliances? If it’s got shore power then it should have a power center with CB’s, and may have a converter to supply 12 volts, and that converter MIGHT have a battery charger integrated in it. Back then, they weren’t always standard equipment. I had one that age that the battery charger was optional.

Just guessing, but this may be one of the models that relied on the truck batteries for 12 volt power, and ideally you would have two batteries under the hood, and a separator between them so you wouldn’t kill both of them.

:):)

It's a '95 Sportsmen 951. It does have a shore power cord and a switch on the converter to go between 120VAC and 12VDC. I don't believe it has a charger but I'm less concerned about that than pulling power from the truck. That isn't working through the 7 pin connection currently. Thanks all.

I'd trace where the hot wire from the 7 pin goes. Should go to a 12v fuse panel. 12V panel "should" have some heavier gauge wire 4-8ga coming off it to the battery, if it has one, or possibly a heavier gauge source wires that are designed to be hooked into the truck's system.
Just gotta start chasing wires. If no battery, it is not terribly difficult to add to an otherwise complete system, other than maybe needing to be creative for the battery location.

xscoobysnack wrote:
It's a '95 Sportsmen 951. It does have a shore power cord and a switch on the converter to go between 120VAC and 12VDC. I don't believe it has a charger but I'm less concerned about that than pulling power from the truck. That isn't working through the 7 pin connection currently. Thanks all.

Clean the connector real good, both the truck and camper side. Use lithium grease when you are done (works great on my plug-in Prius).

Many of the old campers did not have a house battery. They had a converter that you plugged into shore power that gave you 12v or you could pull from the truck enough to power a few lights.

Was not very efficient! Also was not designed for running lights for a long time or many at once.

My 92 NL was that way, found a spot to put a battery but you could not use the converter to charge it as all it did was make 12v and did not care about how charged up a battery was. I pulled the old 12v converter and put in a unit that would charge the battery properly. Worked great!!