A couple of evenings ago, 120V AC power to the travel trailer was suddenly interrupted without warning. One minute, it was working the next it was not.
Since it was dark outside, I really did not want to get into troubleshooting, but I did since it was warm and humid, and I wanted to get the air conditioning working again. All circuit breakers inside the trailer were untripped, as were the GFCI receptacles. The next stop was the park’s power pedestal, which my digital multimeter showed had power. I next disconnected the 30 Amp twist-lock plug from the bulkhead connector where AC power enters the travel trailer. My meter showed AC power was present there, too! What the heck??
Well, Mary Alice noticed that AC power inside the trailer briefly returned as I reattached the twist-lock connector. I started rotating the connector around until I found a sweet spot and screwed in the locking ring. We had AC power again, but I figured I’d better get a new plug ordered before the old one burnt out due to a high resistance contact. I found one on Amazon, and it arrived a couple of days later.
Today, I installed the new plug. Afterward, I had a little time on my hands, so I decided to cut up the old plug to determine why it had failed. Interestingly, it appears that a small screw was trapped inside the molded plug at the factory that eventually got stuck in one of the contacts, preventing it from making proper electrical contact. We purchased this power cable in 2017, and it worked flawlessly until late February 2023. I suppose the errant screw rattled around inside the plug for nearly six years before lodging itself in this position.
A Closeup of the Screw That Jammed the Electrical Contact Making it Inoperable.
Well, this is just another in the endless list of things that happen on the road while RVing. Old Murphy is always present with his aggravating law “If anything can happen, it will.”