johnfr

Our '07 Cayman PDQ had an old style picture tube type TV in the rear bedroom. I wanted to replace it with a modern flat screen 1920x1080 HD TV but was also challenged with how to get the HDMI signal from front of the coach for DVD and satellite. I had tried a couple of the wireless devices from Best Buy and on line sources and none of them worked. One simply couldn't reach the length of the coach. The other would go nuts anytime we or a neighbor used the microwave. Because the coach had a standard 75 ohm coax going from front of the coach to the rear bedroom I tried an internet search for a device that would transmit the HDMI signal over coax. I found the following device and it works perfect. The photo shows the device has BNC connector. Mine came with the standard F-type connector used for 75 ohm TV cable. If by chance yours has a BNC connector one can readily purchase a BNC to F-type adaptor. https://www.hdtvsupply.com/hdmi-to-coax.html HDTVECHS10021.doc

The last 150 miles of our last trip we were running low on power hesitation or no power at times. Figured either clogged fuel filter, cracked fuel line or electric lift pump was the cause. I took the rig, a '07 Cayman with ISB325 engine with 22K miles, in for oil change and routine maintenance along request to look into low power. I told the at the time that I suspected the electric lift pump because of it's reputation for failure. The shop replaced fuel filters and called it good to go. Charged me for 2-1/2 of diagnostics reading to codes which showed low pressure at the injector pump which they interpreted to be clogged fuel filters. When I went to pick up the rig I didn't get a block from the shop when again, hesitation, low power and white smoke. I immediately returned to the shop and informed them they had not solved the low power issue. They then kept it for another week. Test drove it and noted the hesitation and low power. First action was to replace air filter even though the filter indicator showed no issue. Test drove it again and found low power and hesitation when climbing a hill. They then tested the fuel pressure at the injector pump and found pressure within spec. but on the low end of the spec. While testing the lift pump apparently totally failed. They called to get my authorization to replace the lift pump which I agreed to. Yesterday when I went in to pick it for the 2nd time, I was greeted with a bill of $1936 of which $1470 was labor. (9.8 hrs @ $150/hr.) This shop charges an extra $20/hr over their rate for large trucks. Their reasoning is the fact that RVs are much harder to work on. They claimed to have to remove an engine cage and the ECM to access the lift pump which added to the number of hours. All totaled they billed me for 11 hours ($1650) between the first time in the shop and the second time. Much of this time was diagnostics. I felt like this was far too much time for this kind of repair. Just curious if anyone else has been charged this much for replacement of the electric lift pump.

Our '07 Cayman has cup holders for both driver and co-pilot. We love to use our Yeti cups to keep the coffee warm but the cup holders are too small for the yeti 16 ounce cups to fit into safely. The wider diameter simply isn't deep enough to provide stable support for the cups. Curious if anyone has found a replacement for these that would work better?

Best I can see, when it comes to mice and rats, a RV is like a Swiss Cheese with dozens of access points. This past fall I spent a long day crawling around under, in the bays and inside our 2007 Cayman PDQ spraying foam into areas that the beasts could get into. Anywhere a pipe or wire passed up through the floor was an open door. It was obvious that the manufacture had made little or no effort to plug up those areas. One of the main areas I found was where a large number of the wires and pipe went from the basement up into the coach underneath the bathroom sink cabinet. I shown a flashlight down from above and looking up from below there were at least a dozen openings a mouse or rat could easily crawl through. There was an about 8" diameter hole in the floor where all of these wires and pipes passed through. I stuffed steel wool into the areas and then foamed around the steel wool. Where the water line went up to the toilet was another quarter sized hole. I went though 9-10 cans of the spray foam. Since I did this we have not caught any mice in traps set in the coach. This is despite the fact that last winter the storage facility had a major rodent population explosion. I caught dozens of mice outside the coach with a rolling log mouse trap. Plus I put rat poison generously all around my stall in the storage unit.

Absolutely! Purchased an inline fuse holder when I bought the wire along with some 15 amp fuses.

This afternoon I managed to get a snake though the tube and route the two #10 wires to the fridge location. Rest of the task will be much easier. Will enclose the wires in a loom to protect them from rubbing on surrounding metal edges. Thanks for the suggestion Hyposia.

We have a 2007 Cayman 36PDQ. I am in the process of converting our Norcold fridge to a JC Refrigeration 12V Hvac compressor system. Today we pulled the fridge and made the changeover to the Hvac cooling system. I tested it with a separate deep cycle battery in the coach and the fridge is operational. The fridge resides in a cavity in the drivers side slide out. The current 12V wiring to the fridge cavity is 16 gauge which is inadequate to handle the 7.5 amps of run & peak currents that the fridge requires. I need to pull 10 gauge wire from the battery bay. I can see 2 separate telescoping plastic tube that all the current wiring for the slide out runs in. These tubes disappear into the bowels of the coach above the bays. I am curious if anyone has attempted this process and if so how they went about it?

Our 2007 Monaco Cayman is equipped with Intellitec load controller and model 750 50 amp distribution panel. Recently we have experienced several occurrences of having some or all of the breakers trip. We have always been on a 50 amp source at various RV parks. We have a surge protector and it has always shown that the power is correctly wired. Each time it has happened we were running minimal load of TV, Dish, Battery charger and maybe hot water heater. Air Conditioners were OFF. Yesterday I was running the Splendee washer and rear AC and heard the breakers trip. When I checked the box every single breaker was tripped. They are both on the same leg of the power along with the Inverter. In this case it is conceivable that the load exceeded 50 Amps. If that was the case I would expect only the main 50 Amp breaker to trip. Not all of them. Just wondering if anyone has experienced this and if so what was the cause?

We purchased our 2007 Monaco Cayman used in Aug. of 2019. It had only 4025 miles on it when we bought it. Shortly afterwards I learned of the trailing arm issue. I contacted Source Engineering and spoke with Jim. He told me that the mean failure point was around 40,000 miles. Earliest failure reported was around 7,500 miles. Even though our trailing arms appeared to be in good condition, we immediately made plans to have the trailing arms replaced. After inquiring with several RV repair shops in our area of Colorado we found none that were willing to do the job. Either would not work of rig older that 10 years or asking price for labor alone was $3,600 to install only trailing arms. We ended up making our first trip in the Cayman to Eugene, OR to have Source Engineering do the job. He charged us $900 labor to do trailing arm replacement and install their Ride Enhancement Kit. The Trailing Arms cost us $2050 and the ride enhancement kit was $2000. The savings in labor cost alone paid for the cost of the trip which we extended all the way down to San Diego and back home via Arizona. The Source Engineering Trailing Arms are far beefier than the originals. Like I mentioned, the coach only had 4025 miles on it but I felt the preventative measure of having them replaced was worth it. The confidence and peace of mind knowing that your rear axle isn't going to detach from the frame on the next bump in the road was worth every dollar. Adding the Ride Enhancement Kit was some of the best money we spent. I highly recommend the Ride Enhancement Kit for any RR4R chassis. Before we had it installed we would bottom out the airbag travel every time we hit a dip or bump in the road. This would totally freak out my wife. Within the first 100 miles after they install the Ride Enhancement Kit we know it had been the right decision. No more bottoming out on dips and bumps. Trust me, not having the wife scream at me for not seeing the dip or bump was worth every dime of the $2000 cost!

I have followed many discussions like this regarding using a residential fridge on an inverter. Recently I discovered this company that makes conversion kits for RV absorption friges to 12V DC compressor driven. Far better efficiency that using expensive sinemode inverter. If my unit goes out I will seriously consider doing one of these conversions. https://jc-refrigeration.com/product-category/hvac/norcold-hvac-units/

Only thing I see that supports your comment is CFR658.17.k that talks about commercial passenger bus and that expired Oct. 2009. CFR-2011-title23-vol1-sec658-17.pdf

Having driven farm trucks as a teenager in Wyoming we were only allowed 20,000 lbs maximum on rear axles. I just did a search and about 50% of the states have 20,000 lb limit. Some states allow up to 22,400. This isn't based on the vehicle's axle rating but rather what the states feel is the limit to prevent road damage. One of my friends is a Highway Patrolman in Wyoming that was their DOT Safety Officer. He traveled around the state with portable scales setting up road side safety checks where he would weigh trucks and RV to determine if they were withing weight limits. Those found to be overweight got substantial fines. Message here is regardless of what the placard,shows, in many states the maximum is 20,000 lbs by law. If you are exceeding that legal limit and get pulled over at a DOT safety check you could be facing a significant fine. https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/policy/rpt_congress/truck_sw_laws/app_b.htm

Comparing the the online literature for the 2004 to my 2007, there are significant differences in the features offered. Hydraulic vs air brakes for one. The body style of the 2004 is quite a bit different too. I would expect there to be significant differences in the wiring also. The diagrams I uploaded can be found in the Download tab on this sight. There is also a 2003 Dynasty wiring diagram that might be closer.

I was able to get out to the storage site yesterday and replace the relay. That took care of the problem. House batteries now charge when the engine is running. Thanks for you all's help.

They make locking caps for the standard 2" filler pipes. Here is link to one. https://www.fillernecksupply.com/copy-of-aluminum-2-npt-threaded-filler-neck-pipe-sections-choose-length/

While I would have a tough time proving anything the evidence is pretty strong. I sent them an email, copied below to let them know I was on to them. FYI, Someone apparently stole some diesel from our rig while it was at your shop. I had filled the rig up upon return from a trip at the end of Oct. to prevent condensation in the fuel tank while it was in storage. When I delivered it to your shop in mid Dec., I recalled that the fuel gauge was on the full mark. When I picked it up 3 weeks later, I noticed that the fuel gauge was indicating just over half a tank. I dismissed it because the electronic fuel gauge on the motor home tended to be a little strange acting at times. When I got home with it that afternoon I checked my odometer against my fuel log and confirmed that I had filled the tank just 90 miles previous. I still dismissed it thinking the fuel gauge was giving a false reading because it was cold outside Today, I went to the storage lot where I store the rig to add some fuel additive to prevent algae growth in the fuel tank while it is in long term storage. Wanting to mix the additive with the fuel, I drove to a nearby gas station. Having driven it some 120 miles (according to the odometer) since I had last filled it I was expecting that at the typical 8.2 miles per gallon, it would take some 15 gallons of diesel to fill it up. I was shocked when the pump finally clicked off at 50.6 gallons. It was then that I realized that someone at the shop had apparently siphoned some 35 gallons, $96 worth of fuel from my tank. The rig has a locking door on the fuel fill up so whomever did it had to have access to the keys. Don't know who had access to it while it was there but you may want to keep an eye on who has access to your shop. Thought you would want to know about it.

We recently took our motor home to a RV body shop to have it painted and some minor body repairs done to the fiberglass. I had filled the rig up upon return from a trip at the end of Oct. to prevent condensation in the fuel tank while it was in storage. When I delivered it to the repair facility in mid Dec., I recalled that the fuel gauge was on the full mark. When I picked it up 3 weeks later, I noticed that the fuel gauge was indicating just over half a tank. I dismissed it because the electronic fuel gauge on the motor home tended to be a little strange acting at times. When I got home with it that afternoon I checked my odometer against my fuel log and confirmed that I had filled the tank just 90 miles previous. I still dismissed it thinking the fuel gauge was giving a false reading because it was cold outside Today, I went to the storage lot where I store the rig to add some fuel additive to prevent algae growth in the fuel tank while it is in long term storage. Wanting to mix the additive with the fuel, I drove to a nearby gas station. Having driven it some 120 miles (according to the odometer) since I had last filled it I was expecting that it would take some 15 gallons of diesel to fill it up. I was shocked when the pump clicked off at 50.6 gallons. It was then that I realized that someone at the body shop had apparently siphoned some 35 gallons, $96 worth of fuel from my tank. The rig has a locking door on the fuel fill up so whomever did it had to have access to the keys. When I picked up the rig at the body shop the owner had a couple diesel powered Salamander heaters running in his shop. He even complained about how expensive it was to heat his shop with those heaters. It appears that he was supplementing his heating cost at my expense. So lesson learned, when taking a RV into a repair shop, it is probably a good idea, if you have locking fuel access not to give the shop the key to the fuel access.

I uploaded a bunch of diagrams for 2006-2007 Cayman-Neptune a couple days ago. I got them from the new Monaco company back in Sept. 2019.

I was able to confirm with volt meter this morning that the relay is bad. With engine running chassis battery was at 14.1 volts while house battery was 13.1. I confirmed that 12V was being applied to the control terminals of the relay. Have a new one on order from Amazon.

Chad Y -- Thanks for the comments. I was suspecting that this Trombetta relay might have a dual purpose as when I traced the wiring between chassis and house batteries it seemed to be the only common point between the two. I will see if I can find one with silver plated contacts.

It has came to my attention that the house batteries of our '07 Cayman PDQ are not charging when we are traveling on the road. I know that I can not expect the alternator to charge house batteries that are deeply discharged. However, having been connected to shore power just prior to hitting the road, by time we get a few hours down the road the house batteries are not at full charge leading me to believe that the alternator charge is not reaching the house batteries. Our coach has a Battery Boost switch that allows connecting house batteries to chassis battery via a high amperage (Big Boy) relay in emergency situation of chassis battery becomes discharged. I am trying to determine how the house batteries get connected to the alternator while on the road. I haven't found any kind of battery isolator. Does the battery boost relay activate to connect house batteries for charging? I have attached a couple photos showing the boost relay. Also a pdf file showing a similar 12V DC wiring diagram for a 2006 Thunder coach. Anyone out there have any idea how the house batteries are connected to alternator for charging while on the road? 06 Patriot 12 V distribution-large.pdf

My entire gauge panel will occasionally become erratic or non-operational. Traced it to the connector on back of instrument panel. Unplugged the connector, cleaned the contacts gently with fingernail file and reconnected. Worked great for several weeks. When it re-occurs I simply unplug and re-plug the connector and it is OK for some more time. I recent purchased some "Electrical Contact Grease" that next time it occurs will apply to the entire plug and receptacle. The pins are just tin and solder coated so are prone to corrosion. The contact grease will help prevent corrosion.