The basement compartments of this RV aren’t really such a problem that they need their own category but I did recently need to fix something about them so decided, hey, why not. What has been going on since I bought this RV is that the basement compartment lights would not come on when I opened the compartment doors. Each door on the drivers side or passengers side (with a few exceptions) have a nice push button switch that should activate the light when the main switch is on. Here, let me show you a schematic…
Basement CabinetsNote that the main switch after the fuse shown above allows all the bulbs in the basements to be turned on as it’s the main supply switch. I haven’t found the fuse for the Cmpt switch next to the door yet but it’s around somewhere.
So today, I figured it was finally time to trace down the problem with these lights and I started with checking under this plate…which is just on the left in the stairwell as you enter the RV so they’re easy access from when the owner is standing outside or standing in the stairwell.
The ‘COMPT LAMPS’ means Compartment Lamps of course. What I found right off the bat after removing the screws and pulling out that plate with the 4 switches is that there was a push on connector that was supposed to go to the COMPT LAMPS switch that someone neglected to reconnect sometime in the past. The connector is in excellent condition and was very tight when I reconnected it to the switch so it was left off, it didn’t work itself off due to vibration or anything of that nature. Now with that working, I checked and sure enough, I had light when opened the compartment door and no light when I pressed the push button switch on a couple of the doors on the passenger side. And here’s how they look on my RV….
What I found as I worked my way around the RV checking the bulbs is that the engine compartment and the hood lamps both have their own switch and they work independently of the main ‘COMPT LAMPS’ switch. That’s shown on the above schematic.
Over on the drivers side of the RV, I found 4 of those switches that didn’t operate the bulbs. I pulled the bulbs and measured them and they were all fine. On close inspection, I found one switch with a broken off terminal, one with a wire that had come out of the terminal which had ended up lost (easily repaired with a new terminal), one where everything seemed okay but the switch just wouldn’t light the bulb, and one where the terminals inside the switch were pretty dirty and the bulb wouldn’t light (squirt of contact cleaner fixed that one).
I pulled two of the switches for repair.
Once I got the switch open I could see they are brass contact type switches and should work for decades as brass doesn’t corrode that easily.
I had to solder one external terminal back on that someone had broken off in the past, and I had to open one to ‘adjust’ the brass pinch contacts internally so the internal shorting tabs actually made contact. They are nicely made switches and repair was in order rather than replacement and they’ll likely outlast my ownership of this RV now that I’ve repair them.
One other thing I did while working on these lights is to use clear packing tape to tape the frosted white plastic covers so they’re held tightly onto the fixture. I’m always bumping into those covers and they pop right off as there’s no strong positive lock. With the tape, they’ll no longer pop off when I bump them.
I’m not worried about causing a hot spot under the bulb ruining the plastic cover using the tape as these covers aren’t that expensive and I’d bought several extras when I was in Yuma last.