I finally got my coach back after over a month in the shop. I don’t think it took the factory this long to build it. That’s another story I just won’t get into right now. One of the issues I had them address, as I stated on an earlier post, was the cable/sat connections at the UDC, when connected to an external cable or satellite, will not feed the internal connections.
The work order stated as follows;
Problem: Customer states the cable and sat. connections do not work when connected at the UDC. Connections work when hooked directly to a receiver or TV.
Cause: Found 5 crimp connections bad/loose from factory production.
Repair: 5 crimp connections repaired.
Sounds viable, at least in theory, being the “trusting” soul that I am, I figured I'd give the connections a checkout with my home sat. hookup, I have Direct TV at home. You can see where this is going... Not a single connection worked.
I decided to do some trouble shooting on my own. As soon as I removed the wall to gain access to the UDC, there sits the splitter. I merely touched the splitter and both crimp connections disconnected from the splitter. The F-connectors remained attached to the splitter. I then went to the closest cable connection available which is on the opposite side of the basement for connecting a TV for outside viewing. I removed the cover plate and low and behold, 2 more crimp connections came off the cable and remained attached to the wall plate. I’m seeing a trend here.
I then went through my box of left over wires and cables I have in the garage and found a 15’ piece of RG-6 cable. For those who are not familiar with the different cables, RG-59 is a “standard” cable used for most home cable installations while RG-6 was designed specifically for satellite applications. Sometimes you can get RG-59 to work on a satellite system, but in my case, I’ve never been able to get it to work properly so I stick with RG-6. Once I connected that cable to the splitter at the UDC and ran it to the faceplate in the basement. VOILA! It worked as advertised!
I found another 10’ cable the Direct TV installers left behind and decided to run that from the living room entertainment center to the splitter. Once again, SUCCESS!! I now have 2 out of 3 working satellite connections in my coach. The third being in the bedroom, I’m just not ready to tear apart the roof for a connection I probably won’t use much if at all.
As far as the cable connection goes, I have yet to hook up to an external cable connection to verify that was in fact fixed. Based upon past performance from this dealership, I’m not holding my breath.
So, based upon my menial trouble shooting skills, I have determined the cable the factory installs for the sat/cable lines in their rigs is a very cheap quality that was probably designed primarily for strictly cable only setups. Since they most likely purchase their cable in bulk to cut costs, my guess is future Cyclone owners will be dealing with the same issues we are when it comes to sat/cable viewing. In the future, I think I will have a buddy of mine who installs cable for Comcast, make some lines with the proper crimping tools to prevent any more “loose crimp connections”.