help with 1988 electrical?!!

[jfrondeau]

Hi everyone,
I am hoping its something small, but the hallway and bedroom lights decided to stop working in my 29' 1988 airstream/argosy. We are just plugged in through a cheap extension cord to the house right now while we refinish the insides, paint, reupholster, that sort of thing, and until today the lights all worked fine, and today they just quit. We had the fixtures down to spray paint with Krylon plastic bonding paint and put them back in and the back few didn't work. Took it down and the wires are perfect and in place still.The light in the closet works, the plug-in in the bedroom works, and the lights in the bathroom work... I opened the fuse box and the two fuse slots on the left hand side are empy... but as I said they have been working fine since we got the trailer last week.

thanks!
justin

[Mexray]

Do you have two wires or one, going to each of the lights that aren't working?

If you have only one wire to the lights (pos), then the lights depend on the mounting screws for the ground (neg) connection to complete the circuit...check for a good ground...

If you have both Pos and Neg wires going to the lights, then you've probably pulled a connection loose inside the wall - a big pain to correct!

Get a cheap digital voltmeter, remove the bulb, and check both the Pos and Neg areas of the socket to see if you have Pos voltage, but no ground, or vise-a-versa...you can put the Pos probe in the center of the socket, and the Neg probe to the trailer's frame/wall to see if you have +12 volts to the socket...

You can use the Ohm meter setting to check to see if the socket base/ground is connected to the trailer's frame/wall...

Good luck
Ray

[jfrondeau]

Thanks Ray!
I'll go grab a voltmeter today and see what I find out. The light does have two wires going to it, so I'm having terrible thoughts of tearing off wall panels. . . :-( I hope it doesn't come to that!

thanks!
Justin

[jfrondeau]

It was a fuse, thank goodness