News & True RV Stories

That was too easy, chapter 1

Published October 21, 2007

Category: Tech

Ralph traded in a 1998 Intrigue and purchased a new 2006 Magna.  Ralph is a very busy business owner and could not get a way for a "factory delivery" so we delivered the coach to him in California.  He uses this coach a few times here and there for short weekend trips to do a little road racing.  The first few trips we spent a lot of time on the phone as his 98 and 06 have very little in common. 

Wednesday I received the very upset telephone call, "My coach wont start, batteries are dead!"  -  "This beepin, piece of beep, beep damn lemon"  - "I should have kept my 98"  -  "I have to leave Friday in order to make the race, beep-beep-beep" I'm sure you get the picture.  I ran through all the typical solutions, none worked.   All symptoms lead to very dead chassis batteries so I asked Ralph to stick a charger on his chassis batteries overnight and lets see how it works in the morning. 

Fast forward to Thursday morning's phone call "The beeping battery charger has been all night and the batteries are still beeping dead, beeping piece of beep, BEEP."  I then arranged for a wrecker to meet Ralph at his house to either jump start it or tow it in.  The wrecker arrived, opened the battery bay door to connect his jumper cables, and then called me- "Damon, I showed Ralph how to turn on his chassis battery dis-connect, his coach fired right up".  Lesson learned on all ends, always start with the obvious.