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Old 04-09-2015, 02:53 PM   #1
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Brand: Thor Motor Coach
Model: Palazzo 33.1
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THOR #1811
Burned out Palazzo living room lights

Getting our 2013 Thor Palazzo ready for an upcoming trip. Last week all the lights were working normally, but this week all seven ceiling lights in the living room are burned out. No visible breaks in the filaments (G4 two-pin halogen bulbs), but they don't light when I touch the pins to the terminals on a 9V battery.

What could have caused this simultaneous failure? All other 12V lights and fans are working properly.

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Old 04-09-2015, 04:29 PM   #2
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Originally Posted by MapBoy View Post
Getting our 2013 Thor Palazzo ready for an upcoming trip. Last week all the lights were working normally, but this week all seven ceiling lights in the living room are burned out. No visible breaks in the filaments (G4 two-pin halogen bulbs), but they don't light when I touch the pins to the terminals on a 9V battery.

What could have caused this simultaneous failure? All other 12V lights and fans are working properly.
Have you checked to see if you have a blown fuse in the panel?
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Old 04-09-2015, 04:59 PM   #3
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Fuse is OK. I have power at the switch and at the fixtures. I inserted bent paper clips into the holes in the fixture socket and tested with my volt meter, 13.75 volts. BTW blunt paper clip ends don't go easily into the G4 socket holes, I had to sharpen them with my dremel to look like the pins on the bulbs.
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Old 04-09-2015, 05:40 PM   #4
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Perhaps they were on as you were traveling down the road when you hit a pothole, which jarred them enough to break the filaments?

Otherwise, I am at a loss for ideas.
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Old 04-09-2015, 06:04 PM   #5
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No, the coach has been parked since last Fall. The lights worked last week, they don't work this week. Thor tech support thought something might have happened with the DC converter, but why would such a thing affect bulbs that aren't on?
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Old 04-09-2015, 06:08 PM   #6
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The Thor explanation does not sound plausible as if the converter is bad, you should be having other issues as well. But nothing should be discounted.

It could even be something like a near-by (relative) lightning strike when your coach was in storage that took the whole string out. Stranger things have happened, especially if you were not there the entire time to witness if such a thing occurred.

No corrosion issues with the light bulbs?

I had a lot of trouble with halogen lights on my last boat. They never seemed to make good contact, and sometimes if I whacked the ceiling, it would jar the lights on.

And the boat being in a damp environment probably did not help either. But this only happened with maybe one or two fixtures, not all of them.

Hopefully you did not distort the contacts with the paper clips so they won't make good contact with the light bulbs.

And a precaution; with halogen bulbs, it's best to handle them with gloves on, as the bulbs can get so hot that oils left on the bulbs from your fingers can crack the glass. At minimum, I always wash my hands just prior to handling halogen bulbs.
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Old 04-09-2015, 07:14 PM   #7
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Hope you're right, FW28z. We did have some cloud-to-cloud lightning nearby recently, good ol' thunder snow. There are no corrosion issues with the bulbs. No grey coating inside the bulb like what you get when a filament explodes. I put a needle point on the paper clips with my Dremel tool because they wouldn't go in at all with blunt ends. The diameter of #1 paper clip wire is about the same as that of the G4 bulb leads, so I think I haven't distorted the contacts in the fixture.
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Old 04-09-2015, 09:27 PM   #8
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Hard to say what else it could be.
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Old 04-11-2015, 12:15 AM   #9
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I've now got two dozen G4-20 bulbs on order, local RV dealer didn't have 'em. Keeping my fingers crossed that I'll never need them.
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