Dead TOAD Battery with 2016 Spirit 31K

[Siman00]

Hello. I'm a newbie with 4-down towing and have a problem. My tow vehicle is a 2016 Winnebago Spirit 31K. Two years ago I towed with a dolly on a long trip and everything worked fine. But I learned that there are aspects of dolly towing I don't like.

Last summer I decided that a Roadmaster tow bar and a Demco Duo braking system would meet my needs. My TOAD is a 2013 Hond CRV AWD. I had an installer recommended by eTrailer.com to install the system. As far as I know it worked just fine last year.

I'm now on day 5 ofa 42 day trip in the Northeast and am experiencing some problems.

The battery of the Toad is being fully discharged while towing. In addition, I cannot get 12 volts to the passenger side brake lights. I have 12 volts to the electrical plug at the front bumper of the car, but no further. Consequently, I have no brake light on the passenger side of the TOAD. I don't know if the two problems are related.

Any help or suggestions are appreciated.

[l1v3fr33ord1]

Siman00-

Do you have a voltmeter or 12-volt test light that you can use to test the signals on the coach and toad? If so, start at the coach hitch connector. Disconnect the umbilical and test the pins on the hitch connector for the correct signals. This diagram shows which signal should be on which pin.

[Morich]

Many things electrical require a slow seemingly tedious aproach to avoid overrunning some small obvious defect! I consdier a meter to be close to a required tool for RV!

What I would do is start at the trailer outlet on the RV, check each point for giving you the correct 12Volts when that item is turned on. Like brake light point when brakes pushed, turn signal when signal flashing, etc until all points are tested there.
That verifies that all the RV is working to get the voltages to that point.

You'll kick yourself if you go throught testing the car connection, the cra and tehther only to find there was a fuse blownb on the RV! So I work it a point at a time front to back!
Next plug in the tether and make sure the same signals are getting through the tether as well as look it over, especially at where the wires go into the plugs as that is a frequent wear point. Any bare wire sticking out? Fix it now to avoid it getting you next trip!


Once all forward is checked and known to work right, plug to the toad and see what is right or wrong and you can then begin to work on the car without confusion about where the problem is without all the confusing questions of RV, tether or car being involved!

No brake light on one side but not the other is almost certain to be a car problem as they are wired together. Consider a burned out bulb??
The battery charging is a different issue and has several different ways to be wired, so more info is needed there.

One way to narrow the problems is to connect all the points together after testing them and look at the toad battery voltage before starting any vehicle. then if the voltage from the RV is comming in right, that voltage on the toad should immediately jump up when the RV engine is started!
If you have a system where the Rv is to keep the toad battery up during use, you should see the voltage at the toad go up and down as the RV engine revs!

[tim myers]

I have a CRV, and the left turn signal and right turn signal both come on to provide the brake light. Now that might be because of the year of the auto, mine is a 2013. When disconnected from the RV the left and right torn signals are amber, but when connected to the RV the left and right brake lights become the left and right turn signals as well.



I would say you have two separate issues, but that is just a guess. I do not think they are related.



What kind if brake system do you have on your CRV? Also know that that my stock CRV battery was pretty weak and ran down easily. I replaced it with a group 24 size battery with a higher amperage. There is one circuit that I am supposed to pull the fuse to save power when being towed, I found a switch that decentralized the fuse and gave me a switch to turn that circuit off.

[tim myers]

With my set up I can run the max of 8 hours, run the CRV again and run another 4 hours with no issue, except that I am exhausted. When I do arrive at my destination, even if it is a stop over for the night, I run the CRV for 20 minutes or so to recharge the battery for the next day

[Siman00]

Tim, it sounds like we have the same symptoms. I'm wondering if I need to provide voltage from the RV to the battery of the TOAD??

[Morich]

Originally Posted by Siman00

Tim, it sounds like we have the same symptoms. I'm wondering if I need to provide voltage from the RV to the battery of the TOAD??

Whoops! I had missed the part about there being no Charge from the RV?
Is this at the install stage? I had assumed the wiring had been done and now had stopped working!

So maybe more details needed to be asked discussed? Part of the wiring of the toad has to deal with different battery use in the toad and that often has to go back to what year, make, and model of car for details as they vary from car to car.

Was this wired to keep the battery charged at one point and now that has failed or was it not set up to do that and the battery is now enough weaker that it can't handle the load? Perhaps it was working and you were taking shorter trips and now it fails on longer trips as the battery is used longer?

Maybe we need to start over and ask a few questions on how it was wired?
Do you have this outlet on the RV and is there 12 Volts on the pin 4 for "aux charging"?

Is that 12volt charging then connected to the toad battery through the tether?


I don't know what level of charge this would be and not likely meant to recharge a dead battery but more to maintain the level on a toad battery when that engine is not running.

[SanDogDewey]

I contemplated wiring power to the TOAD battery, but I found the wiring in most umbilicals is too small to support much of a load. Not wanting to run a separate pair of wires to the battery, I purchased a Battery Tender 4 amp Maintainer/Charger. I plan to plug it into the motor home when we get to our destination.

Recommend getting your battery load tested. I would think it would last 8 hours.

You may have a bad diode on your passenger side taillight, if that is how they wired it. Some installers put a dedicated bulb in the taillight housing. Just chase the signal from the umbilical to the taillight.

[Retired FF]

Refer to Morich: 12VDC from MH usually 20 amp maintains with braking system (I have Roadmaster Invisibrake), I used a AMAZON single pole inline diode at toad battery connection just to be completely isolated from toad feeding MH if cable is mistakenly still connected during toad start-up.

If wired correctly (using a diode inclusive aftermarket harness) taillight/brake/turn should be solely powered by motorhome. Remember connecting cable is TWO MALES, receivers are TWO FEMALES ... the connector plugs will be a MIRROR image!

[dave5131]

I have the exact same set up for my Buick Envision. Most likely it was installed incorrectly. My service provider installed a fuse kill switch so certain electronic components would not draw power while towing. The problem that one of your brake lights is not working is most likely installer error as well. Take it back! If it was done At Camping World you can go to any location across the country

[dkoldman]

I would check car mfg flat tow procedures. My vehicle is designed to consume power when in Flat Tow mode, it controls the steering as one thing off the top of my head.

For vehicle like that a Charge line is all you need and is very simple. $20 of parts and 30 minutes. I have one wire to connected to 7 pin connector and a auto resettable breaker right at the battery post. My battery is always being charged when my RV is running.

The other power I use beyond the Car's design is for the RVi Brake 3. I have dedicated 12vdc plug adapter to power the brakes system all while it is turned on and activated.

[edju]

Originally Posted by Siman00

Hello. I'm a newbie with 4-down towing and have a problem. My tow vehicle is a 2016 Winnebago Spirit 31K. Two years ago I towed with a dolly on a long trip and everything worked fine. But I learned that there are aspects of dolly towing I don't like.

Last summer I decided that a Roadmaster tow bar and a Demco Duo braking system would meet my needs. My TOAD is a 2013 Hond CRV AWD. I had an installer recommended by eTrailer.com to install the system. As far as I know it worked just fine last year.

I'm now on day 5 ofa 42 day trip in the Northeast and am experiencing some problems.

The battery of the Toad is being fully discharged while towing. In addition, I cannot get 12 volts to the passenger side brake lights. I have 12 volts to the electrical plug at the front bumper of the car, but no further. Consequently, I have no brake light on the passenger side of the TOAD. I don't know if the two problems are related.

Any help or suggestions are appreciated.

Like some others have said, if the original installation didn't provide a 12V source from the RV to charge the toad battery, then that could be the problem with a dead toad battery. I don't think the Demco unit does trickle charging, you can ask them. I've got an Invisibrake braking unit. After a long two day trip, my toad battery was dead. I found out that I need to have the tail lights on the toad actuated by the RV for Invisibrake to trickle charge the toad battery. DKoldman suggested a 12V charge line from the RV to the toad. You have to check the wiring of the RV connector and umbilical cord to verify it had 12V. Then add a wire on the toad. I've looked around for a DC to DC battery charger so the toad battery doesn't get overcharged, they are available.

I think the brake light issue is a different problem, not related to the dead toad battery. I was checking the wiring of my toad to verify it had diodes. The installer had to tap into the OEM wires to add the diode and connection to the RV brake and tail lights. The OEM wires by the tail lights are very small, maybe 22 AWG. I could envision it not having a good connection or coming loose. I would check those connections.

[dkoldman]

Here is all you need to know about Charge Line. There several video as well.

https://www.etrailer.com/Accessories...hoCsKoQAvD_BwE

Attached is picture of my install at the towed battery.

I wouldn't attempt to flat tow without a Charge line installed.

[Morich]

I do not consider the DC-DC charger as needed if we look at what we are doing when connecting the toad.
Our RV has an big alternator that has lots of spare output, so our RV are set up to connect the coach batteries to the chassis batteries and let the alternator charge both. That means many RV have 3-4 or more batteries hooked together, one for chassis and two for coach?
When we hook the toad battery , it is most often just one battery and makes very little change in the load the alternator has to carry. What is often overlooked is how little current will be passed from the RV to the toad battery in many cases.
This is where the small wires in the normal trailer connector tend to be fine, even though they are small gauge wires.

If we assume we drive the car often enough to keep the battery charged, when we pull it up to connect to the RV, the toad battery will usually not be more than a volt different than the RV coach and chassis batteries.
What folks miss figuring is the current flow from the chassis/coach combo will likely not be much.
What determines current flow is the DIFFERENCE in the voltage of the two points.

For instance, if the RV is running high speed and the alternator is pushing 14 volts to get both the coach/chassis battery combo charged and we pull a car up to connect, the car battery is likely to be at least 12+!
So the DIFFERENCE in the voltages is only going to be 2 volts or less!
If we do the ohm's law calculations for 2 volts, we get a very low amp current going to the toad battery.
If we did something really silly and let the tow car battery go totally dead, we could get a bigger draw/current but then that also means you did not drive it up there to connect it, right?
But if we make some assumptions and run it through the ohm's law calc., we get some really small current flow!
Current is volts divided by resistance.
2 volts difference divided by assumed resistance of ten ohm's? You get .2 amps current flow, so the small wire is not a real factor!
Even if we connect 14 volts from the alternator to a totally dead (0 volts!)
toad, we can only push 1.4 amps! Wire size is not a factor to worry about!

What I often have to fall back on is that Winnebago has been doing this trailer connector and wiring for a really long time and it works very well.

So why do we, as novice customers, suddenly feel we know so much more about the way they build and wire trailer connections meant to be Aux 12Volt charging connections?


If this is totally unusable, why do they bother?
Are Ford, GM, and most of the RV builders that much dumber than us???

I'm not going with that idea. I KNOW how often I screw it up!

[dkoldman]

Originally Posted by Morich

I do not consider the DC-DC charger as needed if we look at what we are doing when connecting the toad.
Our RV has an big alternator that has lots of spare output, so our RV are set up to connect the coach batteries to the chassis batteries and let the alternator charge both. That means many RV have 3-4 or more batteries hooked together, one for chassis and two for coach?
When we hook the toad battery , it is most often just one battery and makes very little change in the load the alternator has to carry. What is often overlooked is how little current will be passed from the RV to the toad battery in many cases.
This is where the small wires in the normal trailer connector tend to be fine, even though they are small gauge wires.

If we assume we drive the car often enough to keep the battery charged, when we pull it up to connect to the RV, the toad battery will usually not be more than a volt different than the RV coach and chassis batteries.
What folks miss figuring is the current flow from the chassis/coach combo will likely not be much.
What determines current flow is the DIFFERENCE in the voltage of the two points.

For instance, if the RV is running high speed and the alternator is pushing 14 volts to get both the coach/chassis battery combo charged and we pull a car up to connect, the car battery is likely to be at least 12+!
So the DIFFERENCE in the voltages is only going to be 2 volts or less!
If we do the ohm's law calculations for 2 volts, we get a very low amp current going to the toad battery.
If we did something really silly and let the tow car battery go totally dead, we could get a bigger draw/current but then that also means you did not drive it up there to connect it, right?
But if we make some assumptions and run it through the ohm's law calc., we get some really small current flow!
Current is volts divided by resistance.
2 volts difference divided by assumed resistance of ten ohm's? You get .2 amps current flow, so the small wire is not a real factor!
Even if we connect 14 volts from the alternator to a totally dead (0 volts!)
toad, we can only push 1.4 amps! Wire size is not a factor to worry about!

What I often have to fall back on is that Winnebago has been doing this trailer connector and wiring for a really long time and it works very well.

So why do we, as novice customers, suddenly feel we know so much more about the way they build and wire trailer connections meant to be Aux 12Volt charging connections?
Attachment 188181

If this is totally unusable, why do they bother?
Are Ford, GM, and most of the RV builders that much dumber than us???

I'm not going with that idea. I KNOW how often I screw it up!

Well said. It is amazing how powerful that simple Ohm's law equation really is.

IMO the Charge line is the simplest part of Flat Tow Setup between RV and Towed. Given that one must wire the towed front bumper connector to the lights, why not run a simple wire for charge line with simple resettable breaker.

Unless $15 of parts off Amazon is an issue, there are no negatives for a charge line