Feeling Overwhelmed - Electrical Mess

[RHOMBUS]

Here's an example:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/aww-510226


On my 2002 Thomas, it's on the upper left of PCB4. The original one had a clear cover. You'll have to look at your old one to see if it is a 2-pin or 3-pin. I have not replaced mine yet. There are less expensive options as well.

A "flasher" relay is a cylinder with 2 or 3 pins and standard relays are the black cubes with 4 or 5 pins on them. Standard relays won't be affected by the use of LEDs but the flasher will. Since LEDs use much less power than regular light bulbs, the flasher doesn't have to "charge up" as much as it would, so it flashes sooner, and therefore faster.

[Rivetboy]

Originally Posted by RHOMBUS

Here's an example:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/aww-510226


On my 2002 Thomas, it's on the upper left of PCB4. The original one had a clear cover. You'll have to look at your old one to see if it is a 2-pin or 3-pin. I have not replaced mine yet. There are less expensive options as well.

A "flasher" relay is a cylinder with 2 or 3 pins and standard relays are the black cubes with 4 or 5 pins on them. Standard relays won't be affected by the use of LEDs but the flasher will. Since LEDs use much less power than regular light bulbs, the flasher doesn't have to "charge up" as much as it would, so it flashes sooner, and therefore faster.

Actually, the flasher does not chargeup like a capacitive discharge camera flash. Their is a resistve element that heats up with the current draw of filament type lites with a bimettalic spring that opens a set of contact breaking the lamp circuit. It immediately cools off and the cycle is repeated.

[Brad_SwiftFur]

Originally Posted by Celestina

Jumping into the thread as I too am in the process of converting. I picked up new LED bus lights and your comment about the turn signals caught my attention. Relays are confusing to me, where would I pick up a new relay and what do I ask for?

Typical resistance type flasher units - common on older GM and Ford van-type chassis - rely on a certain amount of electrical load to function. One blown bulb would decrease the load and the unit would simply light up the corresponding side, instead of flash. One extra bulb (such as when towing a trailer) would increase the load, resulting in a faster-than-normal flash rate. For this reason they offer "heavy-duty" flasher modules (typically 2 or 3 prong types) for Ford, GM and Chrysler vehicles, which work independently of electrical load. Ask for this, or a "towing flasher module" (essentially the same thing).


I have not encountered this on my IH bus chassis. I expect it uses a non-load dependent flasher system as is common in the medium and heavy truck industry.

[Sharee100]

Mine looked like that, too. My son has been going thru the wires one by one. I still have a big pile of wires on the floor. Now some stuff doesn't work, like the dash lights and rear lights except the brake lights. My younger says come out to California and he will look at the electrical; he went to school to be an electrician, but is a maintenance tech for FedEx. I can do the other stuff; electrical wiring scares me. I know they are going to sneak up on me in the middle of the night and strangle me. I, too, am a female who will be out on the roads by myself. My younger son says he will explain what he is doing and why. I wonder if my local community college has classes for beginners?

[Rivetboy]

Originally Posted by Sharee100

Mine looked like that, too. My son has been going thru the wires one by one. I still have a big pile of wires on the floor. Now some stuff doesn't work, like the dash lights and rear lights except the brake lights. My younger says come out to California and he will look at the electrical; he went to school to be an electrician, but is a maintenance tech for FedEx. I can do the other stuff; electrical wiring scares me. I know they are going to sneak up on me in the middle of the night and strangle me. I, too, am a female who will be out on the roads by myself. My younger son says he will explain what he is doing and why. I wonder if my local community college has classes for beginners?

Buy a cheap multi meter from harbor freight and play with it. Unless you short 12 volts to grond which can be exciting you are dealing with 12 volts.
You already know what volts are. Always turn off all power to use the ohms or continuity function and amps is how much current that is flowing through your circuit. Lots of you tube stuff out there.

Good luck

[cowlitzcoach]

I am coming into this discussion late because I didn't see it earlier.

I hope my comments will be helpful.

In regards to the Weldon 8-way light controller, used it really isn't worth much of anything. In all of my years I don't ever recall one failing so a replacement, especially a used replacement, isn't going to have much value.

In regards to your battery going dead, you need to understand your bus has two distinct systems that all tie together at the battery. You have the chassis system and the body system. Somewhere in those two systems something is not turning off and sucking the juice out of your batteries. The only way to know which system and which circuit in that system is sucking down the juice is to go through each circuit individually and find which one is sucking down the juice.

When you disconnect the battery, if you get a spark when you take a battery cable off you know a circuit is still hot somewhere. You are going to have to go through one by one every circuit in both the chassis and body to find which circuit is the one that is still hot when it isn't supposed to be.

To do that pull the fuse on each circuit on the chassis fuse box. After pulling the fuse remove the battery cable. If it sparks you haven't found the hot circuit yet.

On the body circuit you are going to have to remove one wire from every switch since the body circuits are protected by resetting circuit breakers.

Eventually you will find which circuit is still hot when it is not supposed to be hot.

It may make your job faster if you have a switch that when turned on nothing happens. If you have a heater or blower fan motor that has died or something jammed into the blower to keep it from turning it would suck the juice out of a battery very quickly and you wouldn't know it because the fan motor wouldn't be making any noise.

If your bus has heated mirrors that switch left on can suck a battery dead within a very short period of time.

The switch panel for the bus body most of the time will not be on a relay operated by the key switch. Which means you can turn stuff on in the body without the key being on. Your electrical drain is more likely on the body side of the electrical system than on the vehicle side.

If the switches are the standard plastic Blue Bird pull out for on and push in for off, those switches are notorious for wearing out so that when you push them in they don't go all the way in to turn off every time.

I hope this has been helpful.

Good luck and keep us posted as to what you discover.

[Elliot Naess]

The pull-push switches in a Blue Bird can leak current in the off (pushed in) position. That was my most mysterious leak. I finally spotted a faint glow in the rear-most dome-light, visible only in pitch black darkness.

[cowlitzcoach]

Originally Posted by Elliot Naess

The pull-push switches in a Blue Bird can leak current in the off (pushed in) position. That was my most mysterious leak. I finally spotted a faint glow in the rear-most dome-light, visible only in pitch black darkness.

That is exactly what I meant about sometimes the Blue Bird push/pull switches don't always turn off when you push them to the off position.