LED Indicator board on Stove

[dcaver01]

1986 2.1 westy

LED Panel on the stove stopped working correctly right after I had the aux battery installed, prior to this it worked correctly.

When flipped on, the three lights indicating battery level light up and stay lit. The propane indicator no longer works. The three to the left indicating water levels no longer work either, but will flash on for a split second when I first turn on the panel.

I've checked the fuses behind the driver seat, appear to be good. I'm not much (at all) electrically savvy, but am willing to learn. I have a multimeter and the first fuse gives a read out of about 12v the one in the rear doesn't give me any read out. Swapped that back fuse and no change. Unplugged the board and connector looks fine to my eye.

Does this sound like a bad board or bad wiring that happened during the aux battery install? Maybe both, fried the board with bad wiring? Something else?

Anything else simple I could check?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

In the LA area, any recommends for a shop that would be familiar with this system?

[sped372]

Check all the connections, not just at the board but wherever they run to from it. I had a spade connector fail at one of the level "sensors" at the water tank and then the lights on the panel acted funny. The spade connector had gotten brittle and cracked; it was no longer gripping the terminal so it was making intermittent contact but most of the time was not actually connected.

Any chance you may have accidentally reconnected wires incorrectly (not sure what all you touched when adding the aux kit)? Good luck.
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1971 Karmann Ghia - 1600 DP
1984 Westfalia - 1.9 WBX

[DLJ]

Try wriggling the small metal switch on front of the board. I find that this usually corrects the symptoms you describe. Very touchy, so be gentle.

[Ahwahnee]

Probably doesn't solve your problem but FWIW I used a double throw toggle switch to control the whole kitchen - powering it from either the main or aux battery. This also allows the voltage lights to indicate the state of whichever battery is switched on.

I used a 'center-off' switch so I could also shut the whole kitchen down - helpful in hot weather when the fridge fan will run constantly (even if fridge is off) because of high ambient temperature.

[dcaver01]

Thanks for the replies - I'll check these over the weekend and report back.

[dcaver01]

Went through my the spade connections. They all look good, nothing sticking out to my eye.

Trying to understand the camper wiring schematic from the Bentley Manual.

The refrigerator works and the sink pump works. Just tossed some water in the tank and the water level indicators DO work.

So just the right side of the panel seems to be messed up. All three lights for the battery level are always on and the LP Fridge indicator never comes on.

Any other suggestions for what to check or what could e causing the right side of the panel to not work?

[crazyvwvanman]

That wiring diagram is the wrong one for an 86 Westy.

That diagram shows the 80/81 Westy wiring. Different.

The Westy diagrams are labeled with the wrong years in some versions of the Bentley.

Mark

[dcaver01]

[crazyvwvanman]

Yes, it is way off.

Look at the front cover of your Bentley. What years does it cover?

Mark

[dcaver01]

[crazyvwvanman]

My later book has it on pages 97.33,a,b,c

Mark

[dcaver01]

Was able to find the pages online -

Seeing that there's a thermo fuse... is that something I can/should check? Can't tell where that's located.

I've got the refrigerator running on LP right now. Any tests I could do while it's running to check wiring and components?

[crazyvwvanman]

That thermo fuse is the 110v circuit breaker by the bed. It only affects 110v.

Mark

[dcaver01]

Been going through these diagrams and trying to test all the connections to see if maybe i can figure out where things are going wrong.

I'm getting readings from all of the wires that come to the board except for the two black. One of the black wires comes from the gas flame sensor - should I be getting a reading here? I have the multimeter set to DC mA, is that right? Pardon my ignorance, learning.

Followed the black wires as far as I could, and couldn't get a reading.

One thing I'm not clear on from the diagrams is where the connection comes from for the board to read the battery levels.

[crazyvwvanman]

On that diagram 12v power comes in on the orange wire that feeds switch E130 on the circuit board. That is what the battery leds are supposed to measure.

The black wire from the flame sensor carries a tiny signal you may have trouble measuring. Milli-volts.


In the Westy wiring other blacks are DC grounds.

Mark

[dcaver01]

[crazyvwvanman]

Yes, the flame sensor itself has to work for the fridge to stay lit on propane. But it doesn't need the the led board, so if you disconnect the flame sensor black wire from the led board the led board could no longer interfere, assuming it is.

The flame sensor is called the thermocouple and it has a rigid metal coax wire to the propane safety valve. This wire looks like a thin copper pipe but is really a wire inside with a copper tube outside.

Mark

[stevw72]

There should be fuses within your display unit ,take the front cover off and you should see a small glass fuse check that on a side note check your "ground" connection or "earth" as we call them in UK.
_________________
this radio station was named KOWalski, in honor of the last American hero, to whom speed means freedom of the soul. The question is not when's he gonna stop, but who is gonna stop him.

[Dampcamper]

You might want to make sure the black ground wire is connected to a ground really. Turn the power switch off, then measure on R x 1 ohms scale from black wire (ground wire not fridge flame wire) at the circuit board to a good chassis ground. Good luck finding a good chassis ground nearby, might want to tighten the end of a wire under a screw into the steel body, then use that for a ground for the test. I guess a second test would be to hook that ground to the circuit board ground trace and see if it works then. Careful poking around with a ground wire on the board though, you don't want to ground out some parts of the circuitry.
I don't know how different the circuit board is for the 86 from my 82 but I did draw up a schematic for mine, I can post a pic of that if it would help.

[dcaver01]

Stevw72 - I don't have that fuse, or not seeing it anyway, mine must be different than yours, see blow.

Either way, I have good news on my end. Bought a new board and it works. Guess the old board was just bad.

Do you all know if there are people who would want this old board? It's malfunctioning but hate to throw it out if there's someone who can fix and would want it.