umbilical hardwire

Bedlam wrote:
The 6-pin exterior plug is under the kitchen counter, but the water heater may make access to it and the connections difficult. Unless the camper side of the plug is damaged, it seems like too much work to convert to hard wired.

Ditto,

ardvark wrote:
Is there not a J box where the truck wires come into the camper. Maybe install a fuse there?

No, AF doesn't have a J-box behind the umbilical inlet. The wire is buried in the wall. Installing a J box will be impossible, because you can't access the wiring to "un-bury" it from within the wall.

deltabravo wrote:

wnjj wrote:
If you ever install on a truck without an isolator and can’t reach the plug when it’s loaded, just pull the fuse to stop the charging.

AF doesn't have a fuse to pull to stop charging from the truck.

The fuse to pull is in the truck's fuse box feeding the +12v to the trailer wiring. My Northsar also does not have any way to isolate the truck batteries from the camper's. I had to install an isolator on the truck.

The 6-pin exterior plug is under the kitchen counter, but the water heater may make access to it and the connections difficult. Unless the camper side of the plug is damaged, it seems like too much work to convert to hard wired.

Is there not a J box where the truck wires come into the camper. Maybe install a fuse there?

wnjj wrote:
If you ever install on a truck without an isolator and can’t reach the plug when it’s loaded, just pull the fuse to stop the charging.

AF doesn't have a fuse to pull to stop charging from the truck.

toddb wrote:
thanks for the input guys, hard wire it is.

Pulling out that 6 pin connector the AF uses and trying to put in some sort of a hard wire pigtail is probably going to be extremely difficult. There's zero access to the wires from inside the camper because they are buried in the wall.

enblethen wrote:
Is the camper battery in the camper? If yes, you should have some type of isolator to prevent camper from draining battery.

Arctic Foxes have the batteries in the camper, but no form of isolation. THe truck is where the isolation occurs, either by having a truck that has an isolation system from the factory, or by adding one on earlier model trucks.

My "truck" experience is only with GMs. GM did not have built in isolation on the GMT900 and older trucks. (2014 and older).

I don't know if they do or not on 2015+.

My Northstar is also hard wired to the camper. The cord comes out the rear of the camper and plugs into the trailer socket on the truck, not an in-bed socket like some manufacturers use.

toddb wrote:
thanks for the input guys, hard wire it is.

I think you’ll be fine. Hard wiring means one less connector to fail. If you ever install on a truck without an isolator and can’t reach the plug when it’s loaded, just pull the fuse to stop the charging.