Dead, dead, dead

[stepdad]

Hey good folks,
We have a 2004 Winnebago Journey. It has new house batteries and the engine batteries we were told are good to go. I turn the key to start it and it's dead. No noise, no nothing. Dead. Any help will be appreciated.

~Thanks, John

[stepdad]

"Back in the saddle again"......thank goodness.:) My mechanic friend came out and we got our baby running again! WooHoo!

I was crawling around the rear end of the unit and I noticed the ground cable connection from the cranking batteries were severely corroded. My mechanic friend cleaned up the ground connection real good and BINGO the Winnebago fired up. Yippee!

Thanks everyone for your help, I really appreciate it.

~Sincerely, John

[gonesouth]

My 98 Beaver had a fuse in the circuit that was controlled by the transmission, which didn't allow the engine to start if it was in gear, I think. the fuse blew and caused me several days of anguish as I was in a park and had places I wanted to go........turned out the fuse was in a box hidden in the wall where the driver's door would be, below the levelling and transmission buttons on the armrest. YMMV

The symptoms were that everything else had power except the starter. following advice received I crawled underneath and cleaned all the contacts between the battery box and the starter, checked the solenoid, all while parked on a wet gravel site during a rainstorm while on my back in the wet. Monaco's help line finally found a guy who was on the line when my coach was built and remembered that they out the box in three seoarate places that year, depending on the options. The last place we looked was under the armrest.

Turns out that as the connectors corrode, the amperage on the fuse goes up, eventually blowing the 20amp fuse. So my time with a wire brush in the wet wasn't wasted, because clean connections lowered the amperage and saved my replacement fuse from blowing. Good times!

[stepdad]

mtrumpet wrote:
Curious as to what the OP found to be the problem and what the fix was?

The problem is I'm not a flippin' mechanic. We're having a fella come out Friday and check things out. We're eight miles from town and I don't want it towed if at all possible. The fella coming out worked on my 2000 National Seabreeze a couple of years ago. He did a great job on the Seabreeze.

Believe it or not we have a 5 year warranty on our 2004 Winnebago Journey. The warranty folks said they get a lot of warranty work requests on faulty ignition switches.

Thanks everyone for your replies, I really appreciated it.


~Best, John

[mtrumpet]

Curious as to what the OP found to be the problem and what the fix was?

[chastho]

OK, I would start checking fuses and relays. On my freightliner ignition fuses and relays are in the shore power cable compartment. The fuses are in a black box on rear wall of compartment with a black and grey connectors on top.

[mtrumpet]

This may be a far cry from your situation, but I had the same thing happen to me yesterday when I went to get our rig out of storage.

I had the batteries all disconnected for the winter. I recabled them up just as I had done every year. Went in to start it and nothing. Completely dead. I did have 12v to the "house", but nothing to the chassis. Checked battery disconnect switch in the engine compartment, and it was on.

Rechecked my connections and found the end of one large battery cable laying in the back of the tray behind the batteries. I missed it when re-cabling the chassis batteries. Hooked it up and away we went.

So, I guess my suggestion would be to check your cables and connection to your chassis batteries.

[45Ricochet]

mowermech wrote:

stepdad wrote:
Charged the cranking batteries all night. Still dead, dead, dead.

So, quite obviously your batteries are not connected to the electrical system. Either there is a bad connection somewhere, a bad relay, or a switch that needs to be turned on.
Start at the batteries with a test light or a VOM and follow the cables until you find the open in the circuit.
Good luck.

X2
Follow the cables and hope for no green crusted copper.

[wolfe10]

Please tell us exactly what works/doesn't work.

When you turn on the ignition key, does the shift pad light up? Does the dash HVAC fan work?

What other items do not work as they normally do?

[mowermech]

stepdad wrote:
Charged the cranking batteries all night. Still dead, dead, dead.

So, quite obviously your batteries are not connected to the electrical system. Either there is a bad connection somewhere, a bad relay, or a switch that needs to be turned on.
Start at the batteries with a test light or a VOM and follow the cables until you find the open in the circuit.
Good luck.

[stepdad]

Charged the cranking batteries all night. Still dead, dead, dead.

[Tinstar]

Not a ground maybe. As far as starting, you could try jumping the starter solenoid. That should give you the information if it's battery related or if it's something else.

[David0725]

This same thing happen to me. And it ended up being the brain behind the shift pad, it runs everything. you can take it out and get it tested. so you do need 2 12volt batterys to start A DP. But really you should have some kind of lights. on mine I changed out the key switch first but didn't help. it was the brain. not cheap so I hope im wrong.

[Teacher_s_Pet]

If a Freightliner Chassis, check the main power cable lug at the firewall. We had a total chassis battery power source failure last fall. All batteries were good. Bad crimping job on main cable lug failed after 10 years of use as fulltimers. New lug installed and all has been fine ever since.

[RayChez]

Next to the battery compartment there should be two big switches that you turn off when winterizing a coach or changing batteries. Are they turned on? One is for the chassis and the other is for the house.