Hi folks.. earlier this week I brought home my first airstream. When I picked it up the PO and I couldn't get the brakes to work with my tow vehicle. When I hooked up the umbilical to my TV my reverse lights on the TV came on and stayed on. To me that meant some funky wiring on the airstream side. Also brakes weren't activating. My Tekonsha voyager's light was on indicating something was connected but that's it. no brakes. I found it in me to assume that potentially the Airstream's battery was supplying the
12V to my backup lights so disconnected the battery in the camper and the TV's reverse lights went off.
All the important signal lights were working and I was running out of daylight so called it good enough for my run home. The PO used the trailer a week ago and said brakes were working with his truck...
My TV is a 2000 Chevy Suburban
1500 with factory tow pkg, hitch, wiring, and a Tekonsha Voyager. I also have a P3 controller waiting to be installed. A few weeks ago I was towing a 16ft cargo trailer and had the brake control working fine so I'm pretty sure my setup was working correctly.
This evening I spent some time testing the umbilical on the airstream and found some oddities. From what I understand in the 70's the airstream's wiring doesn't normally match up with today's typical 7way connectors - so no surprise that this one has odd stuff. Opened the service manual for the camper and looked at that for a bit and ended up just checking the umbilical with a tester and small
12V battery.
All the brake, turn and running lights worked correctly and matched up with my TV.
That left the backup lights, Charge line, and Brake line.
I'll try to attach the diagram of what I found to make it easier to describe.
The what is normally the Brake and Charge line on this umbilical are shorted to the ground when checking with my multimeter. All others check out ok.
I was able to confirm the trailer is expecting the charge line on the centre pin of the connector. Radio came on in the camper when I hooked up a small battery!
I was tempted to open up the umbilical and start swapping wires around but with the two unknowns and the shorts I wasn't sure where to go with it. Also finding the shorts got me a little concerned that my TV's wiring was ok after driving a long distance with the shorts in the trailer... but so far TV seems ok.
Also I did disconnect both ends of the umbilical and tested for shorts within the wire itself.. none. the wire checks out though isn't wired straight through.
Any thoughts on where to start?
Thanks for your help!
Matt