An ounce of prevention.....

[MrLugs]

Well like the title says, "an ounce of prevention.... is worth a pound of cure" or in my cause possibly a burned out hulk of an RV.
I've been anxiously waiting for it to warm up outside so I can finish some projects in my RV. We just picked up this A Class Fleetwood Southwind last fall and it is a fixer upper but hey, the price was right.
So I was poking around looking for any potential issues that I could address before they become a problem. I am a firm believer in preventive maintenance, especially owning older vehicles.
At this point the To-Do list is extensive. Today I was into the Power Tek power panel. This one has the built in Transfer relay, I was looking for burned or corroded relay contacts. They looked great with no discoloration that would indicate heat from corroded contacts. Then I looked at the main wires that came in from shore power and the generator. They looked ok but I pulled them out a bit to take a closer look. It was then that the electrical tape around one of the wingnut connectors fell away revealing THIS!:E (see pic)
Oh well , an easy fix preventing a possible problem down the road.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

With a used RV I always remember it wasn't sold because the previous owners loved it and couldn't stand to part with it.

When alternator inventory was filled, and battery tests were well underway I worked on RV's. Almost without exception, newly purchased used RV's came with a host of land mines. Anyone who'd believe such land mines had nothing to do with the previous owner selling the rig would have to be Mr. Gullible Inc.

Electrical faults may be the # 1 reason RV's are led to the auction block.

When I did more than a minor repair to a Rig I would spend ten minutes with clipboard, and printed check out sheet listing the faults I observed. A good eye catches faults like raw hamburger and soda attracts yellow-jackets.

A cordless screwdriver was used to open up the breaker panel. An overwhelming amount of the time I found loose set screws, burned wire ends. Even though the original repair did not encompass faults, I made the owner sign an "exception" proving the fault was pointed out to them. Not every RV owner is a Boy Scout and doing this prevented many a lawsuit court defense. A few owners got madder than hell when faults were pointed out to them. Good riddance. This was a great filter. Let them go "con" someone else.

[MrLugs]

Yah it's funny, the first thing I noticed last fall was the shore power plug looked nasty. The hot lead blade on the plug had heated up at some point discoloring and melting the surrounding plastic. I just cleaned it up , shortened the wires and reassembled. I thought it could have just been a bad outlet. Could it be related?
It was parked in Florida and does have two AC units.

[naturist]

Bullet dodged, it would appear. Better you find that now and fix it than later while sorting through the ashes in that burned out hulk. Well done, sir, well done.

[Johno02]

Looks like someone may have bee pulling the upper limit on 110v power at some time. Was probably OK for a while, but overheated the wires after a bit. Might have been using electric heaters for heat during cold weather. If voltage was a bit low, that would cause wire overheating.

[MrWizard]

moved from technology