Electric Cord..."getting the Genie back in the bottle" - lol

Hi James,

As good as the Marinco is, they still may fail or disappear. That is why I chose to cut the cord and install a standard 30 thirty amp rv male plug. That way I can replace the long cord at any Walmart cheaply.

JamesBr wrote:
I side with replacing the hatch and hole with a marinco twist lock kit.

I side with replacing the hatch and hole with a marinco twist lock kit.

You need to pull the cord all the way out to fix the knot! It should be 25' to 30' long. Once its all the way out IT WILL be easier to push back in. I have experienced the knot about 5 times in the last 15 years.

Don't be afraid to pull hard.

Thanks Man!

What happens is that when the cable is initially manufactured, it's wound onto a big reel when it's all warm from the manufacturing process. Then when it's re-manufactured to have the correct end, it's wound onto another reel, or sometimes bagged (like in a gunny sack).

What this does is get the conductors to lying a certain way in the cable. They stay that way for a long time and take a 'set'.

Yours has taken a good and contrary 'set' and that's what you are fighting.

The only way to deal with the 'set' of the conductors is to pull the cable out fully, then work it back into the storage area in as long and as straight of lengths as you can. Other posters above have already mentioned this.

It will take a few times of uncoiling it and re-coiling it to get it to straighten out. But it will. The Armor-All is a great idea; wish I'd thought of that with my trailer when it was new.

Just be patient. Also watch it as much as you can for these first few times of removing it so that you don't get yourself a cross-knot where one loop of cable tries to go over the top of another instead of just sliding by. In those cases, you'll have to shove the cable back in and work it past the knot to pull it out. Yep, it takes patience. But it will get better. Maybe not this year, but in one or two.

Also, as you lay out the power cable, take care to take out any twists in it; this will speed up the process of getting rid of the 'set'. Lay out any excess in a figure-8 rather than coiling it in a circle. Circular coiling is what caused your problem in the first place...

I've dealt with this kind of thing for many, many, many years in television and audio work. New cables (no matter how expensive) will NEVER coil up the way you want them to do. You always have to throw them out and coil them up a half dozen to a dozen times before they even begin to behave.

As an added bonus, when I cut the cord and installed a Marinco outlet on the side of the trailer I also gained a lot of storage under my couch that used to be taken up by the cord! I build two new drawers in that space and just toss the cord in the truck now. Not a big deal I suppose, but every drawer counts when it's just me and my three girls (wife and 2 daughters) in a 24' trailer. :B

mobeewan wrote:
It is a bad idea to leave a cord or cable coiled with power running through it. Especially when it may be running the max amount of amps the wire is rated to handle. It has a tendency to heat up because of the resistance created by the magnetic field generated by the coils. The same principle as winding a wire around a nail and sending a current through the wire to turn the nail into an electro magnet.

No, not really.

If the power cable is composed of both current carrying conductors (hot and neutral) than any magnetic field generated by the one is canceled by the other. The inherent inductance of the wire, and the inter-conductor capacitance will have a greater influence on the total impedance than any practical coiling of the whole cable.

Potentially, the loops of coil in the middle will have less air flow, so their ampacity (maximum safe current capacity) is less. That too would seem to be a minor factor.

Having the cable stuffed inside a small box with no air vents - now that could cause a rise in temperature and thus a decrease in apmacity.

So - as I see it, the risk is from overheating the cable while it's in the storage box - not because it's coiled but because the box can get hot.

Me? I didn't like the rodent/insect access hole so I made mine detachable with a marine bulkhead connector mounted to an aluminum plate to cover the original hole.

Back to the OP discussion. You said you could only pull out 5-7'. That indicates you may have a knot or tangle in the cord inside. This could be the source of your problem. Before spending money try to get the cord out of the camper and then experiment with the 1/2 twist method described. It works well for me. While the external connector is nice and convenient, it does add another set of connectors into the path. My .02 only.

Drum wrote:
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Okay, that makes some sense. My next stupid question is: Does it really "coil" in the box? I have a hard time making a decent coil when I've got a whole cable from end to end. I was assuming that by pushing it back in the hole, it went in there as a jumbled up wad with air space mixed in. Still too hot?

I'm asking this not to argue, but I just bought a long 30 amp extension cable for hooking up to a far away source a couple of weeks ago, and I was considering doing this very thing for future outings. Plus, when I've got it hooked up at my house, there's only about 10 feet of the cable pulled out.

I would think that this "heat" issue would be primarily where the wire is tightly wound on a drum, like the electronic retrieval ones, not so much where it is loosely splayed around the inside of a compartment. there was much air space around mine as I recall. I suppose one could take their IR thermometer and check it out if curious.
bumpy

pianotuna wrote:
Hi Drum,

There are no stupid questions.

The cord tends to coil as it is pushed in. If it is carry 30 amps @ 120 volts it may start to get hot because of the coiling. Therefore it is better to cut it off, leaving a couple of feet.

Drum wrote:
This may be a stupid question, but why cut the cord? You've got the male end at the hole anyway, so why not just plug it into a separate RV extension cable without cutting off the existing one? Then you've got extra cable to pull out in case you ever have a need for the extra length.

Okay, that makes some sense. My next stupid question is: Does it really "coil" in the box? I have a hard time making a decent coil when I've got a whole cable from end to end. I was assuming that by pushing it back in the hole, it went in there as a jumbled up wad with air space mixed in. Still too hot?

I'm asking this not to argue, but I just bought a long 30 amp extension cable for hooking up to a far away source a couple of weeks ago, and I was considering doing this very thing for future outings. Plus, when I've got it hooked up at my house, there's only about 10 feet of the cable pulled out.