Thor Forums

[bevedfelker]

Chance -- the maintenance folks from the Navy Public Words verified that the plug on the pedestal was bad (all kinds of arcing and melting around the hot pin). They replaced the plug on the pedestal.

Jamie -- electrician from Navy Public Works said basically what you are saying. It was a long term event. There was significant arcing and melting evident in the box where the plug was mounted on the pedestal.

When I noticed the power plug drooping down after I had opened the CB on the pedestal, there had still been power on the RV. The A/C was running, converter was operating -- basicaslly there was no indication that there was a problem anywhere.

Here's another picture of the connection on the RV. You can see the melted plastic debris in the bottom of the connector. You can also see the size of the hole at the top where the hot pin that fused to the connector was. If you go back to the first pix I posted you can see that there was heat damage to the male plug end of the 20' cable on the connector that was plugged into the surge protector. So the overload affected the plug in the pedestal, the plug on the 20' cable that was plugged into the surge protector, and also the opposite end of the 20' connector, and the connector on the outside of the RV.

Aside from damaging the connector on the outside of the RV, there was no other electrical damage done to the RV -- wiring, transfer relay, converter, etc. I suspect that had I not shut off power when I did, the 20' cable connector would have continued to droop down as the fused hot pin would eventually become disconnected from the RV wiring. At that point there might have been a larger short on the back of the RV connector, and that surge might have caused a whole lot more damage.

Glad I caught it when I did. The cost was $170 for a new RV connector and 20' cable, $117 for the mobile RV dispatch and labor.