Flickering/pulsing 12v lights & cable tv hook up

[Tobys Home]

All in all our new RL is in great shape. A couple of issues I wanted to post are pulsing 12v lights and the cable port in the utility compartment not working and the cable output in the storage compartment working as our main imput should?
After using our lights (Very few) for awhile the lights seem to flicker or pulse ever so slightly. Sort of the way your vision is when your sick. At the dealership they worked fine and now at the campground they do this.???
The tv works fine with the antenna and the booster on. Booster off, cable hooked up and no tv from the input port in the utility area??? It works great when hooked up to the output in the storeage area with a longer cable.??? The dealer did not have a cable hook up so that we could see if it worked or not.
However they answered and fixed everything else that we could find PLUS. Thanks Frank and Diamond RV of Hatfield, Mass.!!!!
Will be back at camp this weekend to further investigate.

 

[Ready to Retire]

I alsohave just noticed the issue with pulsing 12 v lights in my unit. Not sure why. Any thoughts from others would be appreciated.

 

[Grandpa-THOR]

My 36RL is exhibiting the same issue with the 12 volt lights. I first noticed it in the bathroom and now see it throughout the coach. It's a slight flash in the light coming from the fixtures like there is a surge in power making the lights brighter for a fraction of a second. At first I thought it was the result of something I did in the '60's but my wife sees it too!

 

[5th_Time-REDW]

I had the same issue, then a whole bank just went out. I found the issue was that one of the ceiling fixtures must have hada black wire just barely connected and then just fell out of the screw-on connector to the wiring harness - while just sitting in my driveway! After I stripped the wire properly and reconnected, all worked fine again. Now I'm tempted to pull down all the ceiling fixtures to reconnect all the electrical connections.

 

[Happy Camper-THOR]

We, too, have noticed this but were told by service that it was our campsite. Now I know where to start looking.

 

[Tobys Home]

Mike thanks for the answer. One would think that you don't have to check things like that. However I love our coach and will do you repairs. Thanks </span>

 

[Crappie Fisher]

The lights in our 36RE are fine so far. We too had no cable tv reception when we were hooked up to cable service at a campground. Our cable hookup port was miss labled. In your basement area there is an access door for the water filter and access to the hookupsbehind yourdocking station. Look through the door and check for a black coax cable. Plug into which ever port is attached to the black coax cable. We have three ports hooked up to different color cables. A white cable, a black cable and an orange cable. The orange cable is a direct satillite feed to the tv in your living room area, the white cable is a direct satillite feed to the tv in your bedroom area. In our unit, the black cable is attached to the lower cable port of the three in the docking station. This port was not labeled in our unit. Good luck and I hope this helps.

 

[martaz]

Ours will flicker sometimes on shore power but when powering RV with our Yamaha inverter generator lights steady as can be. Beats me.

 

[Adamsvr]

Crappie Fisher, push the button above the bedroom TV and tune your main TV to Antenna/Cable. Do a channel scan and you should be good to go.

 

[martaz]

Well, I bought one of those auto transformers to address low voltage issues at a park we stay at quite a bit. When voltage drops below a certain level it kicks in and raises voltage. I notice when it is in the voltage boost mode, absolutely no light flickering. I gues that points back to low power quality at the pedestal/park as like I said earlier, when running on generator flickering is gone as well.

 

[Ready to Retire]

Have you had any luck finding out why your lights seem to flicker? I also have the same problem and thought I woul ask prior to dropping every light to make sure connections are tight.

Thanks.

 

[Grandpa-THOR]

martaz... can you provide a brand or link to that transformer you purchased?

 

[Tobys Home]

I am having an electrician come in tomorrow and check out our coach. Electric and television. We seem to think it's the campground. I pulled and checked a bunch of lights and found nothing. I even added a booster to my cable tv line. He will check this all outtomorrow and I will fill you in.

 

[UNDRPSI]

I experienced the same flickering. I asked the service manager about the flickering lights and he said it was the campground. We'll be home tomorrow so I will be able to plug into a generator to check out his theory. I think with all the camper in that campground at that time running AC's to the max to try and keep them cool has to be a big or huge draw on the campgrounds electrical system. One other reason that I think its the campground is when it was in the service bays I never saw a flicker on the lights and they had them all on. Hope its that simple anyway.

 

[par-REDW]

We had another discussion on flickering lights in another topic today.Lights are driven off the DC supply which is converted by your onboard DC converter (AC to DC). In order for the AC to be a problem there would have to be some pretty violent swings in the AC voltage which I somehow doubt.
Edited by: par

 

[KR2011-REDW]

I myself would bet on a bad converter. These world friend products are very cheap and we replace a lot of them at my shop.

 

[dave and ginny]

I've wondered about the worthiness of the converters. KR2011, what does a good converter cost? And what is a good brand?

 

[martaz]

Granpa. Will get link for u. I believe its a combo of both bad power as well as low quality converter. Ours doesnt flicker when powered by our Yamaha inverter generator. Nor do lights flicker when park power drops low enough to kick in boost on our regulator.But also too in our old rv, with a higher quality converter, we never had flickering of light on shore power. World Friendship converter un regulated cheap converter I believe. Not surprised they are frequently replaced. Replacing it with a quality unit is on my to do list!

 

[Tobys Home]

Just sat here thinking about all the problems we as Redwood owners are having with the reqular things that have a day to day operation in our vehicles. I hope in my heart of hearts that we are not paying experiments. This coach was to have been well thought before it went into production????? I myself hope that every cheap piece of hardware was not used on our coaches. This forum has helped me to no end but all the problems are scary. Sorry for the down comment.

 

[Grandpa-THOR]

Not a down comment just being realistic. If you review this forum and make note of all the small issues that have been discussed, you can only hope that the Redwood folks are reading and hearing our concerns and frustrations with every intention to address each one. I don't think that they are intentionally using cheap products in their fairly expensive units. Sometimes you don't knowthe quality of the productthe vendor is selling you until it gets real-time use. This topic, "Flickering Lights" could be the results of RV parks not providing enough juice to the unit or some other outside cause. If it is an internal issue, I'm sure it'll be taken care of.
Honestly, we just dropped our36RL off at Service after three months of occasional usewith a short punch list of warranty items. Maybe a dozen items, none of which were critical; just a 'missing piece of trim' here and 'the carpet rolling under the slide' there. We owned a Carriage for several years priorand had three pages of punch list in the first three months as well as added items as the two year warranty ticked off.TheRedwood is a fairly new product and in my book, a damn good one!