Problems installing a car radio in my Trillium

[Tbrew100]

Originally Posted by thrifty bill

IMHO, one of the best upgrades to my 1977 Trilliun 1300 was replacing the old inadequate, battery boiling power center, with a PD4135 and a battery. Cost me $250 including 30 amp 120v connection.

Has made dry camping possible. I’m dry camping right now at a national park.

Thanks I will look into that one.

[Glenn Baglo]

You can buy a Sony radio that runs on AAs for $50. If you want better sound, you can add an AUX speaker.

[Joe Romas]

Originally Posted by Tbrew100

Thanks for all of your suggestions!
I put a meter on the 12v dc coming out of the converter. It meters at 19.1Volts, I am thinking I will need to step it down to 12volts. In hindsight the interior lights ran very hot.
Thanks again

If the converter is anything like the one in my 1999 17' Casita they were very crude back then and as mentioned above when plugged into 110 Volts AC you basically get half wave rectified AC. Half wave is off half the time.
Do your self a favor and get a new modern Converter and a 12 volt battery.

[thrifty bill]

One other recent addition I made to my Trillium is I got a set of USB powered computer speakers, that have a headphone jack for sound. I use an old iPod to provide the tunes. Lots of speaker choices out there, from a very basic sound bar on up. So now I no longer carry a stack of CDs with me. I installed a simple 12V DC outlet, with a USB plug for charging phones, iPod and whatever. So it will power the speakers.

You can find them for about $10 and up. I bought this $20 set. I haven't used them yet.

My $250 figure above was $140 for the PD4135, $80 for a RV battery, and less than $20 in various fuses, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Labs...%2C169&sr=8-34

[BolerMike]

If your set up is similar to Dave W's then obviously you'll need some kind of step down/conditioning to use your radio on AC - probably more trouble than it's worth.

Also depending on your set up (particularly your trailer electrical connector) - if you have 7-pin coming into the trailer you could run it off of the tow vehicle power. It would have to be fused and most likely the stereo has a fuse in it anyway. The other issue of course is a) does the tow vehicle supply power when it's shut off and b) running down the tow vehicle battery...

I would think that you could find a cheap, off-the-shelf a/c - d/c power supply strong enough for the stereo (from digi-key or amazon) as a stop gap until you decide on a new converter.

If you're unsure of whether the radio itself even works - find a pin-out/installation instructions for the stereo and hook it up to the battery on your tow vehicle.

Happy tinkering!

[Tbrew100]

Thanks for all of your responses.

I have a 110v fridge and everything else runs on 12v.
I do not want to add a battery so I have removed the faulty converter that provided 12v(19V) power to the trailer and would have charged the battery if I had one.
I have replaced it with an AC to DC Converter RoyPow 180W (Max 200W) 12V15A Power Supply Adapter. This will provide the proper 12v to power the radio and 15 amps is enough to power the lights in the trailer.

All is now working perfectly.

An easy and relatively cheap fix.

Thanks again for all your replies