Friday, May 10, 2013

30A hookup modification

The original design of the 30A electrical hookup left something to be desired. It had a hard wired 25ft(?) cable that had to be pulled out through the floor of the storage compartment. This made for a hard time trying to handle the cord when hooking and unhooking from power.

My solution is as follows. I cut the cable so that enough was left between the male 30A plug and the end so that it could be hard wired into the gang box. I used a ratcheting tubing cutter and it worked awesome on the very thick cable, giving a very clean cut. It's now just long enough to plug into the generator's outlet right next to it. I removed the original cable out of the gang box and fed in the "new" shorter cable and wired it up.

Using a female end extension cable, it can be plugged into the short mail pigtail I created without having to wrangle the entire length of a 25ft cable through the hole in the compartment floor as was the design.

An advantage to this is I can now get a non-hard wired surge protector and plug it in between the 30A extension cord and the short cable that is hard wired to the van, and it'll be protected from the elements, and out of sight from thieves.

I went on Amazon and bought an Arcon 18206 30-Amp Replacement Generator Power Receptacle and a Camco 55245 RV 30 AMP PowerGrip Replacement Plug so I can reuse the original cable.

It's comes out considerably cheaper than buying the special lock box for the surge protectors ($40) and a 25ft prefrab 30A extension cable ($55+) and makes everything easier, so I am happy with the mod.





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