B+ motorhomes

I think the determining factor is just how hot did it get? If it smoked and smelled like my 'mishap" :) I would worry. If the plug was hot to the touch and the prongs are not discolored, I would relax.

Artum Snowbird wrote:

In any case, please do consider if the metal wiring inside the cover has been overheated, it must be replaced completely. Overheated copper does not have similiar properties of conduction and resistance as good copper.

Mike

Mike, I see what you are saying, as I guess the electrons will not flow the same in copper of a new form (heat tempered). I cannot say for sure that my plug ever OVERheated, and I may have just felt it one hot day and jumped to a simplistic thought that, "Aha, that must be what caused the cord to come out of the plug head."

But the plug prongs show nothing, and it occurred to me (after fooling with long waterhoses) that my long cord may be doing a one-way 'racheting' in response to the flexural strains of coiling./uncoiling it, as I said here...

burlmart wrote:


Plugged the cord into adapter and house outlet and ran the AC - there seems to be no noticeable heat issue.

I will monitor the plug heat at a cg.

If I do determine a 'cool' plug at cg power stations, I will be inclined to guess that the cord pulls away from the plug due to all the uneven 'bunching' that might occur when winding and unwinding all or partial lengths of the 25 ft. powewr cord. Maybe not related to heat at all. Will let you know.

What do you think?

Likely the same material, but made for electrical use rather than liquid. The material I used came in several thicknesses, with flexible metal zippers that could even be used around a bend if necessary, and cut to the length desired.

After a large cable tray fire we had to isolate lines and be sure their insulation from each other wasn't endangered. Once the burnt section was pulled out of the plastic mess, we would cut off back to the unburnt section, discard the burnt pieces, and splice in new lengths between the good ends.

It might be just as easy to put a stretchy rubber layer of tape (again, industrial electrical product) and then a layer of Scotch 88 lapped over the rubber. The rubber layer provides a waterproof and rub resistant layer, and the Scotch 88 is the finish layer.

In any case, please do consider if the metal wiring inside the cover has been overheated, it must be replaced completely. Overheated copper does not have similiar properties of conduction and resistance as good copper.

Mike

Artum Snowbird wrote:
There is such a heat shrink wrap. I don't know about smaller sizes, but when I worked as an industrial electrician we would sometimes have to splice cables that were connected at both ends hundreds of feet away...Likely the company, RayChem makes smaller sizes for smaller cables.

Do you mean like shown here - www.HeatShrinkSleeves.com?
Picture -

There is such a heat shrink wrap. I don't know about smaller sizes, but when I worked as an industrial electrician we would sometimes have to splice cables that were connected at both ends hundreds of feet away. The shrink wrap wrapped around the splice like a slit plastic tube with two turned back edges, and had a metal "zipper" that slipped over the edges and held both sides together as heat was applied with heat guns to shrink the product onto the wires beneath.

Likely the company, RayChem makes smaller sizes for smaller cables.

Hey Burl,
Sounds like a reasonable repair. I tighted every screw in sight, including the ones loose in my head when I buttoned down the renovation of a near debacle. I wonder if there is a product like a heat wrap that you could wrap around a cord split and then heat with a hair dryer to make a nice seal? I've only seen tubular electrical heat wraps so if there's a big plug in the way, one must find alternatives.

From conversation of 6/28/09...

cheeze1 wrote:
Burl, your breaker/fuse panel should be under your rear dinette seat right next to the sink cabinet. You need a torx bit (#10?) to remove the front panel. There is another panel held with 2 normal screws that surrounds the breakers. Remove that and you will find the buss bars. In addition, under the rear dinette seat (if the cover doesn't lift remove the screws) you will find another buss bar screwed to the floor. That's where I found one loose wire. The ones on the melted bar were too far gone for me to determine if any of those were loose/causing the problem.

Finally got to tightening all loose screws:

These two busbars were where you had a meltdown


* on the two bus bars you pictured in a link showing your problem meltdown - I had little looseness on maybe two screws,
* and one needing a 1/4 turn on the other bus bar under the seat where all wires were white.
* Note. though you did not mention this, I found several wires were 1/8 turn loose at the terminals of the 6 or so pull-out fuses next door to the two busbars that melted on you (to the right of what you see in the pic above)

Also, we had discussed my power cord head-to-wire separation. I bought a replacement 30A plug (for the cg power pole) at Home Depot (Leviton No. 830 T) for $10. It is 2 piece hinged plastic w/ good instructions of how to strip the wires and which go where. I will keep it in the RV, but for now as a backup.

I bridged the 1/4" gap from the plug head and the cord outer black sheathing by forming a 1" long barrel around the cord (using a 1" wide by 2" long piece of thin plastic cut from a old soft butter container) working one end of the barrel up into the plug head and wrapping it all over w/ elec tape. Plugged the cord into adapter and house outlet and ran the AC - there seems to be no noticeable heat issue.

I will monitor the plug heat at a cg.

If I do determine a 'cool' plug at cg power stations, I will be inclined to guess that the cord pulls away from the plug due to all the uneven 'bunching' that might occur when winding and unwinding all or partial lengths of the 25 ft. powewr cord. Maybe not related to heat at all. Will let you know.

Thank you bulmart and cheeze1... I was worried I had caused havoc here... :(

This forum has been a help too me especially when we were having problems with the TV antenna which seems too be working after all the suggestions that were given. Parking under trees is when the reception is really bad.

Anyway we didnt get our motorhome for our Pet (which turned into 2 pets lol) but it sure is easier too take them places. There are only a few motels that let us bring them. We have done that twice with our Ellie.

We have met a different class of people by having a motorhome. We 'mingle' with people more with a motorhome. (MY HUSBAND NEVER meets a stranger!) Perhaps because he is a nurse. I dont know... We always have someone coming by and asking how we like our B+ . Once when we were looking an the different types of camping things we found a neat slide in truck camper with a slide out for more room. The man we spoke to actually invited us in too see the difference in room space.... lol STILL WE LOVE our B+ the best. The reason my husband likes the size of our motorhome is because he can drive it in and out of most places. That is not too say I WISH we had a HUGE motorhome. However we would probably never come back home... lol

The occasional off-topic 3-4 posts is not the issue. However, when Artum Snowbird posted "It would be an interesting poll. Are your pets and their cages secured in case of an impact?" (sorry, I didn't mean to pick on you), it seemed that this thread might head way off topic.

Also, these forums are A LOT easier to read if you go into your preferences and increase the number of posts per page to 20; I only show 112 pages to this thread. (I noticed that someone indicated that the thread was 223 pages)

Do not apologize. I do not think the topic went very long, and we normally talk about our pets here because most of us travel with them, some of us got the RV's FOR them, and we do have more than just an impersonal, "stick to the topic" thread. I have been a member of this forum for a long time now, and it's very obvious how helpful this has been for so many people.