How To Salvage A Defective Electrical Cord

The camp trailer in which Pam and I presently live is old. Not as old as I am by a long shot, but in camper years...okay, it dates back to 1980 or so. In camper years, that's a bunch. When we first bought the thing in 2003, the thought that we'd need it as even a temporary primary residence was the farthest thing from my mind. Best laid plans of mice and men, and all that.

For several years, the Rawhide (that's the name on the side) served yeoman duty as our son's only place to live. Technically, he's Pam's son, my stepson. Zach needed shelter, so one week I hooked the camper up and headed out, towing it 1325 miles from our then-home in Montana to his biological father's land in Sierra Vista, Arizona. Over time, Dad observed that the extension cord supplying electrical power to the unit from his (Dad's) workshop was overheating at the point where camper plug and extension cord meet. Zach was warned about this. Attempting to keep the peace, he bought a heavier cord at a cost of $25--a fortune to a man who works hard but not every day, being on call with a mobile home setup company.

The plug continued to overheat. Not being an electrician, Zach didn't know what to do. He especially didn't know what to do after his father came by one morning and arbitrarily just plain cut off the plug without warning. From that point forward, Zach was left without heat, air conditioning, electric lights.... Thanks a lot, Pops.

I knew nothing about this until recently, a couple of months after Zach gave the trailer back to us so that his Mom and Stepdad would not be technically homeless. The Irritated Snip Syndrome sounded just like Zach's Dad, but my challenge was to see that Pam and I had safe and effective electricity available. The first step in that operation was obviously to inspect the remaining cord. These RV cords pull out at some length, enabling them to plug into power supply outlets at various RV parks when they travel. Silly me, I'd never pulled that cord out once, not even before buying the unit in the first place. Zach had (I've now been informed). He could see something was not right but had no clue how to rectify the situation.

The "something not right" was truly blatant: About three feet from the outside end, there was one of the most incompetent, defective, and downright dangerous electrical splices I've ever seen. And although I'm not a licensed electrician, I'm on familiar terms with wiring. Being raised on a ranch, you learn a bit of everything that can be learned pertaining to doing things for yourself. Additionally, my two years in the U.S. Army was spent as a field wireman, and I've wired and/or rewired a number of houses, outbuildings, and motor vehicles over the years.

Did I mention this so-called splice was the worst I'd ever seen?

The question now became: Could this damaged heavy duty electrical cord be salvaged at all? One answer to the problem would have been to go buy a new 30 amp cord and replace the old one entirely, but such things cost money, and in our present circumstances, money is in short supply. So I assembled my little army of tools and went to work figuring out how far the black wire's corrosion extended. At that point, nearly seven feet still extended from the storage hole in the camper's side. We only needed a foot or so, since we're stationary on our own land rather than visting RV parks. But was there a foot of good wire available?

This exploration proceeded somewhat like a very oversimplified autopsy. A linear slice was made in the outer rubber sheathing, following which the sliced piece was cut away from the three conducting wires and set aside for possible future use. After that, using the diagonal cutters built into a pair of needle nosed pliers (because the better set of diagonal cutters is hiding somewhere at the moment), the black, green, and white wires were shortened and stripped to exposed the copper strands. Most electricians use stripping pliers for that last task, but I've never mastered them completely: Somehow, a strand or two of copper always seems to get broken when I use them. So I stuck to my basic Exacto knife "whittling" process and managed (happily) to keep all the strands intact.

As it happened, corrosion still showed in the black wire after two four-inch shortening cuts. Taking a deep breath and actually saying a little prayer, I made a third cut, this time whacking off a good eighteen inches of wire. It worked. Beautiful, shiny copper, no blue-green corrosion, no darkening indicating oxidation.

Whittling the wire ends to prep them for a new plug was the last that could be done that day. Not knowing for sure when I'd be getting a chance to finish the job and not wanting oxidation to downgrade what had been accomplished so far, I then wrapped the ends in a plastic shopping bag and tied it off for the night.

Few household extension cords are rated to carry more than 15 amps of current, although some of the truly heavy duty versions will go as high as 20 amps. The heavy 8 gauge wire in the RV supply line, however, is rated at 30 amps. Thirty amp plugs look nothing like the usual household plugs, and they don't match up at all. The usual solution for those of us using extension cords to provide electricity to RV units--and there are many of us, despite all the dire (and sensible!) warnings not to do so--is to plug the heavier RV plug into an adapter which is set up for 30 amps coming in but only 15 amps going out.

Instead of doing that this time, however, I decided to eliminate the adapter and wire the heavy RV conductors directly to a 15 amp plug...if it could be done. If it could, there would be no danger in the innovation whatsoever. In fact, it would keep the plug a touch cooler than any plug-to-adapter could manage, simply because every time a push-pull plugin arrangement is added, it's sloppy. No plug shoved into an outlet is going to make as solid a connection as copper wire wrapped around a post and then screwed down tight. So, if it could be accomplished, the power from our portable generator to the coffee maker would involve not five sloppy plugins (coffee maker to RV to adapter to extension cord to generator) but only four sloppy plugins (coffee maker to RV to extension cord to generator).

But the "if" was big one. The 15 amp plug looked like it would readily take 10 gauge wire but would really try to balk at accepting the extra diameter of 8 gauge. With such a tight fit, it was going to require great care...and a deep wish that the conducting wires could have been solid instead of many, many strands.

In the end, it did get accomplished, but this is one case I'd recommend "Do as I say, not as I do". Using the adapter is just a whole lot easier, especially if wiring scares or confuses you a bit in the first place.  I was pleased with the result, though!

You may notice in the above photo that the white and black wires are exposed for a short distance behind the screw posts that securely connect them. To make this a perfect job would have required undoing everything, retrimming all three wires to exactly the right lengths so that they came out looking like the green ground wire already does. However, I chose to call it a done deal for several reasons:

1. Fighting the oversized wires onto the screw posts had required bending the receiving brackets slightly to enlarge them a bit and had already taken twenty minutes of poking and prodding.

2. The cord is for our own personal use and is unlikely ever to undergo an inspection by any official--especially since we are off the grid and don't deal with the power companies.

3. Although slightly exposed, the copper of one wire is nonetheless entirely unable to make contact with either of its neighbors, so safety is not an issue. Clearly, if safety were an issue, either the connections would have been redone or the adapter adopted.

When the metal plug housing was repositioned and screwed securely together and the two screws at its base snugged down on the rubber sheathing, the plug should have been relatively water tight and good to go...but that's not good enough. This is southeastern Arizona, and the summer monsoons are due within a few weeks at most. Enter the rubberized electrical tape: Numerous wraps, ranging from a couple of inches back down the RV cord to well up around the base of the metal plug housing. Now even the worst rain will run down off the plug like it does off the proverbial duck's back, no sparkie, no shortie, no fire-ee!

At which point, obviously, there was nothing left to do but test the repair. We fired up the generator, shooting electrical power through the new plug to the RV that had gone without for more than two years. The roof mounted combination air conditioner and heater was turned on and tested (producing the finding that it really needs help). Every light in the camper was turned on, including the Tinker Bell night light near the kitchen sink. The TV was not turned on, but only because we don't get the oversized antenna until tomorrow.

And of course the coffee pot was turned on. Even with all of that, we probably weren't pulling more than 5 or 6 amps, but that had been more than enough to heat up the defective cord when Zach had the trailer and his Dad had a Snippy Fit. Half an hour later, the plug was still cool to the touch, just the way it should be. So we shut everything down...and poured the coffee.

Thanks for reading,

Ghost32