I recently installed a Trimetric battery monitor (works great). Anyhow, I reserved one wire to monitor the start batteries. Now I need to run that wire from the coach battery compartment (D-2, 2nd compartment on driver side) back to the start batteries which are located in P-4, last compartment on pax side. So what is the best way to run this wire? I was thinking I would have to fish it through that center tunnel. Thanks.
jor
JOR
In my coach (1995 U320) I have a couch behind the drivers seat, I would come up through the floor (carefully because there are other wires along the wall on the floor)
Then run through the kitchen and bathroom and pick up some existing wiring and work into the area at the foot of the bed.
There's the extra wires that go from the dash to the rear bumper area of the coach. I think they run through the center tunnel. If so you could tap into one of those right in the 2nd compartment tunnel.
Running a new center tunnel wire is difficult: I ran a multiconductor cable from front to rear. The toughest part was getting the wire past the last bulkhead before entering the rear axle area. There is (at least on my coach) a lateral tube that crosses right in front of the center channel. All the wires, cables and hoses have to go around this tube with sharp bends. That in itself isn't bad except it's hard to reach into that area because of the water tanks and the opening in that rear bulkhead is tight. I think I pushed a long 6-8' steel rod (1/8" dia) from the water bay (at a diagonal) through the bulkhead opening. Then I crawled under the coach (safety blocks in place) between the differential and bulkhead and taped a pull line to the end of the rod - there's only a few inches of space between the bulkhead and lateral beam to work. I did the same thing for the bulkhead in front of the water tanks too. And it was the same story for the front axle bulkhead as well. But now I have plenty of conductors for future projects.
We ran many wires from engine compartment to front dash at one time. Some were twisted pairs, some were coax, and others were a variety. Twisted pairs came out in our side battery compartment and all the others were ran to the curb side front corner and up though the floor to behind the dash. We put them in a wire loom to keep them together. We are aware of Foretravel spares from dash to rear street side and have also used them. All of the wires we have run have not been used, so we still have some for future projects. A coax was useful for a 2nd rear camera. Some have been used for a turbo pressure gauge and we ran a special pair from turbo to dash for a pyrometer exhaust gas temperature gauge which is the main thing we use when driving up mountains to prevent overheating. Pyrometer is also used to let us know when turbo temp is cool enough turn off engine.
If you only need a single start battery wire, it may be easier to use Foretravel spares and run a wire from street rear to start battery and run one from street dash to house battery compartment.
Thanks, guys. I ended up using the extras. I needed two so I picked a couple from the Dash and ran them under the couch and into the battery compartment. At the back I used a small loom and ran them around the engine compartment to the start batteries. Nice to have a reliable number for the start batt voltage.
jor
"I needed two so I picked a couple from the Dash and ran them under the couch and into the battery compartment. "
If you need two, pull at least three. Next time you will have a "pull wire"
Bill, Always love the "Voice of experience", like you, been there etc etc...
Cheers
Dave M