A car bumped our CCD 25 in a line-up for the gas pumps. Very slight damage, mostly just mashed the rocker panel under the side cargo compartment a little and didn't seem to damage the outrigger. Scuffed the cargo door and the wraparound shiny trim between the body and the rocker panel.
The next morning, inexplicably, the lights in the rear 1/3 of our International were dead. Oh crap! Did I nick a wire last year when I installed the two solar panels, and it just now broke through? No clue what was wrong. Easy first, I checked the fuse panel, vom shows power across the fuse terminals.
We disassembled and checked the switch bank at the lavatory and found power for the vanity lights only. The power for switches for the rear overheads, the rear roof locker, and the bed reading lights all dead. No problem, I'll just jumper from the line side of the powered switch (yellow circuit) to the unpowered switch (purple circuit). A twenty amp circuit with not much on it and we rarely, if ever, run more than two sets of any lights at a time.
Went to the truck to get the wire strippers, crimping tool, connectors. On a whim I stopped by the exterior fridge cabinet on my way back into the Airstream. The CCD 25 has a big multi-wire plug connector running through the fridge cabinet. Yep, a purple wire leads into and out of this connector plug. On a hunch I grasp the wire insulation of the purple leads on either side of the connector and push both into the middle. Not very scientific, didn't even check the connection with my vom first.
Walked into the Airstream, checked the "purple" circuit and everything works. Whew! Some of the wires into the big plastic molded plug (in the fridge exterior panel area) have little or no slack. And Airstream Co very heavily vulkemed the wire bundle's entry and exit points of the fridge panel area. So one circuit's wire finally, after almost thirty thousand miles, withdrew just enough to break the connection.
Lessons:
- I failed to trouble-shoot all the reasonably accessible parts of the dead circuit.
- I feared the worst (dead circuit in some unreachable part of the trailer).
- I jumped to an easy (and compromise) solution.
- And I can and should perform preventive maintenance on this and other accessible wiring connectors occasionally.
Alls well as ends well. Lights on!