Dan, Would you look at my reply above about a similar experience with my 22FBS electric motor/chain drive slide? It mysteriously worked after driving 12 hours. Could there be a similar bus bar and breaker as you point out here? Fuses were good and rest of the electrical system worked normal with and without shore power when the slide would not retract electrically... Thanks in advance. Mark
Mark,
So far as I know, every Heartland trailer has a row of mini-circuit breakers near the battery. And I'd expect your electric slide is powered from one of those breakers. The primary power source for the breakers is the battery. If the battery isn't getting charged while on shore power, it'll eventually run down and won't be able to power the slide motor, whether electric or hydraulic. The electric slide draws less power than a hydraulic pump so it may work when the hydraulics don't, as in RDsharp's situation.
Your buss bar/breakers may look a bit different and you probably don't have as many breakers as in the picture I posted. But there's still going to be a manual-reset breaker that connects the power converter and the battery. And when it trips, the battery won't get recharged from shore power.
But, the connection from the truck will slowly recharge the battery while towing. So if your manual breaker was tripped, and the battery ran down, there wouldn't be enough power to bring the slide in. But after towing there would be.
If you have shore power available, one easy way to determine if the breaker is tripped is to check the interior lights. They should operate normally on shore power because they get power from the power converter. But as soon as you unplug from shore power, the power converter shuts down, and if the manual reset breaker is tripped, the lights will go out because they can't get power from the battery.
We have a
12V Block Diagram and Diagnostic Guide that may help you to picture all this.