Had to take my own advice - Hi-Lo camper travel trailer forum

hilltool · 05-15-2017, 06:10 PM

Picked up trailer today from shed I had stored it in over winter. Had left batteries in with a battery minder all winter even though it gets very cold here. Anyway- before I hitched it up I raised it and it went up fine. Drove down the road to my sister's place and parked it to do a once over before hauling it 40 miles to where i live. Absolutely NOTHING when I flipped the master to raise it and no 12 volt anywhere in the cabin when I checked that. And then there was 12v.... and then there wasn't. My brother-in-law was standing there wanting me to check a "breaker" and I said "I've offered advice to people a dozen times when they have this problem but I've never had it myself. It has got to be 12v problem not a breaker problem". Of course, with the top down I didn't have access to my battery posts so what to do? Fortunately, I DO have access to the manual pump lever with the first battery box flap up----and I was able to pump it high enough to get the rest of the door open to hook up cables from one of those portable battery-jumper/ mini-compressor units I got at Costco. It went right up. Checked with multi-meter and I was at 12.4-which isn't perfect but the batteries were obviously charged. There were a few loose connections and I am assuming that initial trip down the road was enough to make the connections bad. It was kind of exciting as I had never used the pump before. I'm glad to know my advice was helpful to myself.

Rick

JackandJanet · 05-15-2017, 06:54 PM

Good on you, Rick. I've used the manual pump lever and thought it was pretty simple. There's also the manual crank for the tongue jack that's good to know about too. I keep both "handles" in the battery box right under that front flap.

- Jack