Valid - Power Gear Air/Hyd Operator panel dead..

[bill4029]

I wanted to provide a problem with the solution to share the information.  Initially we had returned from a long trip and parked the coach in the barn. Went out a few days later to finish unloading and when I tried to fire up and level the Valid display panel would not power on or any response at all. I read may posts that talk of fuses and sensors before starting in and found no real good hint of my likely problem.  My rig is an later build 08 Beaver Marquis Amethyst doe reference and the control is on the driver side left console. I decided to start there after looking at all of the fuses I could find in the books I had with the coach, but found no problems. I decided to take the left side console apart and  look at all of the connections and make sure I had not missed a fuse inside the console. as it turns out previous service people had been in there and really broke the panel in 2 places and several screw holes broken out.

      The symptom I had was regardless if the coach was running, or not and in drive, neutral or reverse. The panel would not respond to any button press on any of the panel buttons and no apparent life. I later found if I released the Air park brake and then after a few seconds again set the air brake to on, the POWER button lite and the PARK red indicator would flash once.. but no more and no function. Additionally the coach did not respond to any default ride height to travel or appear to do any air control action. I found I was STUCK in the barn with all bags fully down!

     I used this for a good reason to replace the side console inlay as well and hoped the leveling panel issue would present itself along the way.  I was able to find a new old stock panel and purchased it and decided to add an aluminum back sheet to reinforce the panel as it was the same wood covered plastic and wanted this one to last a time.  Upon getting the old panel off I found the Valid control panel had 2 cable connections a 8 pin min connector and a 6 pin connector. This is the part where the first issue appeared !   I found a wire that appeared to belong on the 6 pin broken and a second wire that had a pin lulled out of the connector as well. I could guess where the broken wire went, but not the pulled pin and oh yes.. found yet another black wire laying near by that I suspected should be connected somewhere.  I searched many places for manuals starting at Lippert who had purchased Power Gear and other companies for any insight on the pin out for this and the other  connector for probably a day with little success.  Finally I came here to the website and found some PDF documents on the Valid power gear system from Frank McElroy and inside there were the connector pinout for all connections and much more. Reviewing the .   and came to this sites forums and finally found the page that covered this connector. It was for CAN-L and CAN-H signals and was able to verify the 8 pin connector and it's connection values.

I was able to find some new quite tiny tubular pins that fit this connector and built new extension wires that I joined to the old connections (and YES SOLDERED). Once the connector was reinstalled I noticed a small red light on the controller panel but still had no power.  Last thing is to pull the 8 pin connector and verify power which was of course all good! But after i reinstalled the 8 pin connector the panel was again FULLY ALIVE !!!   Problem fixed and all operations returned to normal !

Link to the book Frank  posted : 

He also posted a large list of other coach files for leveling :  https://www.monacoers.org/files/category/1-air-systems-leveling-jacks/

 

Again I wanted to share my issue and the fix, so perhaps the next person might not spend as much time getting a happy evening !

Bill Dowell