Dome Light Wiring Shorted Internally

New member to the forum, and a very happy owner of a 172T as of September of 2010.

 

Eventhough I am very pleased with it overall, i have noticed a number of things that lead me to believe that these units are put together with very obviously poor workmanship.  There are the crooked screws on fixtures, overtightened screws on receptacle plates, big pieces of wire trimmings left over in the breaker box area, multiple screw holes on the roof for the dome lights, the list goes on...

 

But the one that turned into a failure that bothered me the most was the apparently shorted wires leading up to the two dome lights in the rear of the pod.  After having blown a fuse or two, i decited to check the wiring leading up to those two lights. Sure enough, i can detect (with a meter) a short in the wiring somewhere (with the fuse removed of course).

 

I spoke to the serice folks over at Jeff Couch's and they told me that they have seen this issue twice.  Both times, paneling screws were driven through the wires shorting it to ground.

 

To complicate matters, my local r-pod dealer is apparently mad at me for not buying from him (eventhough i tried to work with him, and was even willing to pay $1,000 more to buy locally), and he is now refusing warrnaty work on my pod.

 

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

Aris.

 

It sounds like you may have made the right decision in not doing business with your local dealer in the first place. I might contact FR and see which other nearby dealers actually want to stay in business. I'm sure you'll find a dealer willing to take on the job.

 

Worst case scenario, it might be easier to take a different route than the original wiring, disconnecting, then bypassing the shorted section of wire completely. Less disassembly might be needed.

 

 

 

The dealer in White Marsh wasn't willing to work with me, either.  I ended up buying from - and later getting warranty work done - from Stoltzfus' in PA.  They were the 2nd closest dealership from me.  I live near the PA/MD line on I-83 and its about a 1 1/2 hour drive one-way.  Not close, but closer than going back to OH.  We camp in that general area several times a year so its not a huge detour if we need to drop it off between trips.

 

If you want to tackle the wiring issue yourself I agree that the better solution may not be ripping the panelling off.  You could look for sticky-backed contact paper with a similar color/design, and then run wires from the nearest 12 volt source, covering it with the contact paper.  Worst case, you can buy sticky-backed printer paper, take a picture of your wall, then print the pattern on the paper.  With some trial and error you should be able to get it very close.

 

If you remove the light fixtures between the shorted section, you may be able to use the "channels" that the factory used for the original wiring and fish thru a new section of wiring.  The lights are usually wired in parallel.  I recently did this to lenghten my component video cable running thru the ceiling (it shared a channel with the light wiring) and just this morning, fished two #8AWG wires thru the layers of my floor from one side of the camper to the other, using an existing channel that had 2 pieces of Romex and an RG6 cable in it.  Note that sometimes there are 90 degree turns at the fixtures requiring removing the fixture at the 90, fishing to that point, and then fishing to the next.  It sounds harder than it is.  All you have to do is remove the screws from the fixtures and fish.  When done, reinstall the fixtures.  You won't be able to tell that anything has even been done, visually.

 

Caveat: I did no mods to my Pod, so I can't promise that it will work with the Pod.  It has worked with more than one trailer that I have owned.  I am also assuming that since you are familiar with a meter and testing that something like this would be within your abilities and you sort of know what I am talking about.  Also, don't try to use the existing wire to pull thru the new wire, or you'll just get hung up on the same problem screw.  Good luck!