electrical nightmare

[divein15]

Hi, I'm New to this sight and have a big problem and hope maybe someone out there can help me PLEASE.
Have a 1999 Dutchmen Exspress RV in very good condition and everything works. But I have a problem with the 5 front running lights not working, all the rear lights work fine.
someone installed a propane gas detector in it and the wiring ?????
They brought in a power wire from the main harness ?? and put in a ground wire coming up from the battery under the RV,

( the gas detector does not work on 12 volts or 110 volts ) its dead.
If I ground out the ground wire they ran to the detector the front running lights work fine. Disconnect the ground wire the lights go out.
Anyone possibly have a clue what the heck is going on ???????
Thank You for any help you can give me
Dave

[larrypride]

First check to see if you have power and also see what voltage your detector is. It won’t be dual voltage, might have a battery back up. If it’s original I was probably 12 volts but maybe somebody added a home 120 volt unit?

[divein15]

Hi larrypride,
Thanks for the info but I finally managed to figure out what the idiots did, oh boy the rocket science behind this one.
That gas detector was out dated and junk, the idiots smoked it by hooking the wires up backwards but then after smoking it they decided oh lets run another wire to it and see if we can get it working again ???
well they cut the ground wire to the front running lights somehow thinking it was a power wire and ???
I finally figured out the red and white wire they ran to the detector was the ground wire for the lights and then they brought another ground wire up from the battery that runs all the 12 volt stuff and actually hooked it into the hot power wire and smoked the wires where they jumped it in the birds nest of wiring under the refrigerator which took me about 3 1/2 to 4 hours to rewire the mess these people made of it.
I swear, if people don't have a clue what they are doing they should have enough brains to ask questions and learn something before they burn down their RV or Camper or blow it up somehow and get someone killed.
But I guess the key work is use your Brains but that might be asking or hopping too much ???????
It really is sad to see these really nice RV's and Campers turned into a pile of crap .
LOL LOL I should have taken pictures of the wiring mess so everyone could see it and what I had to do to fix everything..
Well at least I can say the wire smoked before it did and damage to the Refrigerator, Inverter, Microwave, and anything else
Dave

[larrypride]

Glad you got it fixed