Power-Sucker

Started my day today by getting out my new fancy amp meter and jumping into the RV to search for the culprit. Hooked up my amp meter directly to the battery, turned on the DC disconnect switch, and saw it immediately spike to 16.5 amps. Then I proceeded to remove EVERY DC fuse on the panel and still it was draining 16.5 amps.

So I went to the only thing I knew of that could drain that power IF it was turned on (and it was NOT), and that is the refrigerator/freezer. So I hooked my amp meter directly to the dc power on the back of the fridge itself and lo and behold, 16.5 amps. Disconnected and terminated the lines and checked the battery again. Down to 0 amps being drawn. PERFECT.

Zubie says there is no power in a
birdhouse either.... something must
have drained it too

So not only did I find out the refrigerator was draining the power, I also found it was bypassing the fuse panel, but not the power disconnect switch. Someone made a boo-boo wiring or rewiring this fridge at some point. On the plus side, nothing else was draining the batteries once I removed the fridge from the power.  Looks like a new control panel is in my Dometic refrigerator's future.

So that's the good news, the bad news is I still don't have enough juice to start the truck. I think when I closed the hood of it yesterday with the trickle charger on it, it hit the power button. So all night long, no power was going to the batteries. So I'll tackle that one later and hope that this issue didn't kill the 2 main engine batteries. I have no idea how old they are anyhow, so they may need to be replaced.  Could be original to the truck for all I know.

Update:  Was able to jump start the truck and ran it for an hour or so...will test it in the morning to see if it kept a charge on the batteries.

Update 2: Started up the Revcon with no issues today, so the hour long running yesterday charged up the batteries good.  Looks like 2 less batteries to replace.