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Different names come up for the same thing; a relay or solenoid is merely a remotely controlled switch. I suspect the term relay came from the telegraph relays in the 1800's, where the weak incoming current from the long line was used to trip a relay connected to fresh power to send out a new...

I once spent the night at the Gila Hot Springs (not far from Silver City and the Gila Cliff Dwellings, a nice place). I was sitting in the warm water, drinking a cup of coffee, when a storm came up and it started hailing -- Really strange to be sitting there all warm and cosy, sticking my...

Someone mentioned in another thread that someone else found that a stud finder will work to find framing members (how's that for a rumor;) ).

The Hellroaring isolators look like the right stuf to me. Guys, also keep in mind that sometimes "good enough" is indeed good enough. If one is only occasionally boondocking without shore power or generator or solar, and not using the power-sucking stuf like the furnace or reefer in 12VDC...

I just read the following on a Ford F-series Camper Relay thread on the Truck Camper Forum of RV.NET, where a discussion is going on about isolation, and this makes some sense to me and explains how the diode isolator, PROPERLY INSTALLED, can give a full charge without worrying about the diode...

It's not a contest, it's an exchange of information and we all learn in the process. DIODES According to this WiKi page on diodes, "While standard silicon diodes have a forward voltage drop of about 0.6 volts and germanium diodes 0.2 volts, Schottky diodes voltage drop at forward biases of...

Prior to the electronic advances, the telephone company used specially designed light bulbs as ballast resistors on special service circuits; they were called Ballast Lamps IIRC. In this case, one good thing would be that if the voltage were to get too high, the bulb would burn out, acting like...

Umm, put it all in one box and call it a laptop computer? :D

One drawback to most systems where the house battery is being charged by the engine system is that the engine starting battery is in parallel with the house battery. Most 12VDC experts recommend that batteries being used, esp charged, in parallel should be as much alike as possible, even down...

When I was fulltiming, I cut the spout out of a laundry detergent jug (free at laundromats ;) ) and used that as my 'yellow tank' at night. Just take it to nearest toilet in morning and pour it down. Doesn't work well for females, however...

(Note to all the normal people in the forum-- this kind of stuff gets me unreasonably excited; I know it's odd, but at least it's not immoral!!) :eek:Just to be argumentative, what kind of power loss would a 0.4 Ohm snubber resistor cause in a normal charging circuit? Seems like cheap insurance...

Here's a useful table I found on another TC group. If you take the expected current and the expected wire length, it gives you the appropriate wire size as recommended by vehicle boom-box (aka thumpers) installers http://www.mobileaudio.com/rac-faq/. I don't know what the underlying...

My brother worked as chief engineer for a company and one of his responsibilities was the vehicle fleet. They ran strictly synthetic oil (a commercial brand of Mobil-1) in their engines and sent oil off for analysis. He said on the average they wound up changing oil annually, without regard to...

Consider putting Rain-X on the truck rear window before installing the TC if you are going to leave it on.

There is a company in Florida called Roamer that makes fiberglass non-pop up TCs and they also made boxes and doors for the outside of pickups to access both the bed spaces AND the wasted space between the fenders and bed (I kept the oil drain pan bungeed up in there when I was full-timing so I...

Ben, that's excellent advice! A person's camping style is going to strongly affect which options are going to be useful and which are going to be a waste of money, space and fuel. The little fiberglass trailer groups are rife with folks adding bathrooms to their used rigs while other folks are...

the marinco plug has three pins...one is unused. that pin could be used as a "sense" line to confirm that the plug is seated. that could just light a single led in the cab as a "GO" indicator. That's a clever idea, but one would want to be really sure that someone didn't somehow plug 120VAC...

I have some comments gleaned from years of reading RV groups and from personal experience, however, I haven't owned a TC yet, so if I am wrong on something PLEASE correct me in the forum so the archives are right! I'd rather be right that wrong and I'd really rather be corrected than be...

Just for the info in this thread for lurkers and archive-searchers, every RV city water inlet I have seen has a checkvalve located inside the city water inlet to keep RV water from flowing back out (similar in part to the checkvalves that are in a home system on the outside spigots). These keep...

It seems as though it would be tough to pinch the bags from underinflation as they are very thick and stiff, but I'm sure the propeller heads at Firestone know what's best. I was in a store once where they had display bags cut in half and they are really tough-looking. I've noticed they also...

Get a cheap 12V air compressor and you won't even have to find a gas station! http://toolprice.net/product/1307F?META=nextag-1307F I have something similar that I bought at Wally for about the same price and I have even used it to reset the bead on a truck tire (takes a looooong time because...

Don't overlook sources like West Marine for sturdy boat stuf. There is a lot of commonality between the boat world and the mobile camper world, with the chief difference being whether one finds oneself swimming or walking when things go badly wrong :D

Umm, it may not shift any noticeable weight to the front; all air bags/extra springs basically do is raise the rear by a little bit. You might get more noticeable weight shift if you were to raise everything a couple of feet, but not likely on a couple of inches, esp when the axles and...

Here's the problem with the Firestones, according to their instructions (and I would very strongly suspect it exists with just about any similar air bag). They don't want you to run with less than 5psi, likely because some/all? mounts may allow an empty bag to be pinched and destroyed. OTOH...

People on the small fiberglass trailer groups, trailers slightly larger than TCs, are buying 5-6KBTU a/c's at Wally, mounting them in window when stopped and running them with various small generators (Honda, Yamaha, Kipor). With a 2KW Honda, it should start a 5KBTU a/c while running in...