62 Overlander questions

[goransons]

that screwed on cover should have one in there. If the wood is decent, it will likely (unless it was wired on a Friday afternoon right?!?) be screwed to the bottom of the sub floor for the travel vehicle charge line. Did fully disconnecting the 12 volt power source and reconnecting it reset it? Also check the 12 volt ground. Often the ground from the battery to the shell is bad, and that alone can do it too. Typically the ground is buried in the front wall near where the wires go up from the belly pan to the clearance and tail lights. No way to access without tearing things apart, but you can jumper from the negative terminal on the battery to the skin of course and create a new connection. Again, somewhere near that front battery box should be another circuit breaker somewhere, maybe in the battery box.

[Hittenstiehl]

G, thanks for the reply.

We have not YET located any 12V breakers will continue the search for them as we know they are in here somewhere. We DID however get the 12V back working.

We started with the disconnect from the battery option, waited about an hour, reconnected the battery but 12V did NOT reset. We then tested the battery, in case that was our problem and it still showed 25 percent. We put the battery on charger.

Meanwhile we opened the flap under the curbside corner of the belly pan. Lots of wiring tangles, a few acorns but no 12V breaker. DH felt around inside and I took photos (photos not good enough to post) and we didn't locate breaker.

Put the fully charged battery back in and 12V is back working. So possibly while testing the capped off wires we drained the battery enough to make it not be able to power the trailers 12V.

Photographs show the battery box (I refer to it as a flower box) which is teeny an barely fits our optima(s) batteries, maybe that's why everybody opts to put their new ones inside. Also a photo of the wire tangles. NOTE the knots in the red wires.

Digression:
I have spent a lot of time over the years reading AirForums. Lots of restoration threads and the other material too. I go back to the vintage years Threads and read people's builds and questions as they pertain to our vintages also. Some of the information sinks in some of it is stashed away for later times but I have learned or at least have been exposed to a lot of info over the years. So yesterday morning while rereading Goranson's 2011 started thread about his ATWC Safari he talks specifically about red wires under the front side of the belly pan and the Knots in them. Another poster answers his knot thoughts and links to it. The link still worked and the lightbulbs went off for me. Those knots actually mean something. Silly me, when I was looking at the tangled wire mess I thought "why would somebody leave those knots in the red wires, I'll undo those when we get around to it". Not so fast there. Thank you very much Goranson. Yes I have been reading that thread for a long time but seeing as how we didn't join AirForums until 2013 I likely hadn't read back to the very start of that thread.

[Hittenstiehl]

Dagblamit, I knew I was going to mess something up in this post and I didn't catch it in time to Edit it. I'm so sorry. I was rereading 66 Overlander thread about the ATWC Safari, while conversing with Goranson about my trailer. They each do incredible work on Historic trailers so you'll understand the confusion.

[HiHoAgRV]

As you will likely find out, not only were there year-to-year and plant-to-plant differences, but previous mods add to the complexity of figuring these old trailers out.

My '63 has been completely rebuilt with none of the old systems left 'vintage'.
My '61 is unrestored by has plenty of 'updates' over the years. It did have 2 fuses inside the external battery box and no others to be found. One of these was power to all of the 12v systems and the other was in the charge line. It's pretty easy to turn on too many fans, lights and such and pop the 20A fuse to the house systems.
I moved the batteries to under the sofa, added a sealed/vented box and upgraded to 2x 6 volt batteries.

[Hittenstiehl]

Thank you HiHo. We will keep looking for them as we know they're in here somewhere.

[Hittenstiehl]

While the Overlander is in the air for new axles it's a great time to look underneath (without laying on your back) and take some photos.

What would these drains have been for.

They are all on the curb side. The larger single one is located almost between the tires and would be kind of hard to reach.

[Hittenstiehl]

Oops forgot photos. Here they are.