INTRO

Why do your power cords, ends, and adapters melt or burn up on RV's? Well, that's the question that will be answered today and staying on the road. And then, in the RV life, we're going to talk about recovering after an accident in an RV. Then, at the next stop, we will visit Whitehall, Montana, and speak to an older man named Ron Hunt, the Jefferson Valley Museum, and an RV environment.

Talk about tough times, how to buy smart, and a new format, which is part of our show. This is Eric Stark with TheSmartRVer.com podcast, delivering the smarts you need to enjoy the freedom of the RV lifestyle without the fear of breaking down. This talks about everything RV. Today is episode 160. Let's get into it. Alexis is here, ready to go.

Alexis- Right. Well. I'm ready.

Eric- She's ready. She's shaking her head. Ready?

Alexis- Yep, yep.

Eric- Have we got a cup full of coffee?

Alexis- I do. Yeah, it's a coffee day today.

Eric- Or some sort of adult beverage day to do it. Okay, now we have a great show that's been planned today. So before we get into it, I want to remind everybody, since we're late in the game now, we're at the end of September, and we have yet to talk about Winterizing your RV.

It was on our schedule, but it never got into the mix.

Alexis- Oh no.

Eric- But we have other episodes on Winterizing Your RV, and you can find links to the previous episodes in the description today. But just a reminder: Winterize your RV. Yes, get it done while you can if you need to. Right now.

Alexis- Yeah.

Eric- If you live in sunny Southern California, you don't have to write "live in North Dakota." Consider it today. Now, before we dive into this, I'm reading my notes. I realize I don't have my notes, but I dig into them. So zip D makes it on in a power awning for Airstream trailers.

It might be on another RV, but this one's specifically for Airstreams and is called the Relax Awning. This awning is a complex little beast, and it's interesting. We have a customer who had a problem with a dealership. They did some work on his RV and disconnected the panel from it. And for whatever reason, they're in there to buy it, probably accidentally.

And this awning, you know, they hooked it up wrong in the awning at work and blah, blah, blah. So, go back and forth, and it turns out it is wired wrong. But one of the things about this awning is because, you know, he's asking me out. I dug into the research on it. Whenever you have one of these zip DNA power awnings and this relaxed control panel before you deploy the awning, you always want to hit the close button to ensure it always resets the sensors.

It's a sensor-driven awning. Okay, that was very interesting. Yeah, and leave it to Airstream to come up with something. Zippy awnings are excellent, but this could be nicer. You were like, I wish I had a manual awning, not a power on him. And so it's more complex for the typical person to dig into unless you get the manual or talk to a Zip D and learn a little bit about it.

But one thing that stood out to me besides having the hit clothes was, And that's a big thing with zip dealers hitting clothes before you open them. Hit close, close, close, close. If the awning gets stuck in the out position and you need to bring it back in manually, it's quite a chore. He has read the instructions, like, wow, that's some work, and you have to take things apart.

Take the gas struts off and do this, do that. The other thing is more than two or three steps. Oh, boy. And so if you have an Airstream with one of these powers, and the awnings are on it, you should get out the manual, understand how to do that, and ensure you have at least those tools.

So if you ever find yourself with that awning stuck out, and I know you will, because another thing it says in the instructions, do not ever lose power to the awning when it's in that extended position, so badly goes, dad, something goes wrong here. Fuze blows. I don't know, anything could happen. And all of a sudden. What? The awning just bonks out.

Wow. You need to understand how your awning works and ensure you have the right tools to bring it back in if you have to. Okay? You know, properly, not desperation. Cut the fabric, tear the thing off, and throw it away. We don't want to do that, right? So, just keep that in mind. That's just a little pointer from Eric to improve your day.

ENJOYING THE RV LIFESTYLE

All right. Now, that will take us to enjoying the RV life we will have. Oh, boy. This is going downhill, Alexis. This could be more positive, too. Not very positive. And now we're going to talk about recovering after an RV accident. Yeah. You know, Alexis is going to take this in a different direction. But it just dawned on me, like after you buy your RV, you got to recover from that.

That's true financially. Yeah, that sounds negative. Sorry, people. Alexis, we're talking about an accident on the highway. You know, you crashed into someone, and someone crashed into you. We're talking not a little fender-bender thing either. Whereas, it's a big accident. Right where things go wrong. All right, Alexis, take it away.

Alexis- All right, those are not about your finances. This involves a call to action to get insurance, especially if you don't. Okay. We've discussed this before, so I won't go into that. But the first thing you want to do when you do, because it's a scary thing when this happens, whatever the case may be, you want to check yourself first because if you're on the side of the road, make sure you're not jumping out of the truck or out of the RV, depending on what you have.

Eric- And, you know, getting hit by another car. We don't want that to happen. So, prioritize your safety above all else. And if you have passengers there, safety as well. Check for injuries. If medical attention is needed, do that first and then check and assess the damage on your RV or trailer. What? That's what you're going to want to do.

Alexis - Secondly, ensure you and your family are safe, and then check what happened to your RV. I don't know; notify your insurance providers. That's probably next. That's an emergency. You have to do that. Take pictures, take lots of photos. Make sure there's proof because they always want pictures and more. So, having insurance using it is okay.

Make sure you stay connected and seek support, which is here. And make sure that you're okay with other people having gone through this. If you're on a forum, asking what they did can make you feel better, not so alone, and then you might be a little shaken up for the next trip. You know, once you get all the repairs done, once it's all dealt with, you might be a little, you know, want to really go out and get back on the horse after you've been worked off is not always an easy thing to do.

Eric- But you know, it happens. You can all recover; if you want to keep being, you should. But you know that's right. You know, accidents happen, you know. Do. We're on a major highway here in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana. And, you know, we see a lot of accidents.

Alexis- Yeah.

You know, it's expected. And with an RV, it's easy to hit someone somewhere to hit you, even though you have this big RV.

People don't see you. Yeah, right. You know, someone just does something stupid, or you get a blowout, you lose control. You see countless trailers and turn them over on the internet. Yeah. You know, you can get images of that within seconds. Your trailer turns it over on knowing Google. That trailer turned over, RV turned over, and millions of them RV on fire.

There are millions of them, you know, so things happen. And this is a great article. Alexis houses on the more brilliant websites every year.com under enjoying the RV life, and the article's title is Recovering after an RV accident. It might not be something we're worried about today, and I have a teenage attitude toward it.

Right. But having it in mind, you just read it once, and that's all you need to do. Just have it there, and it might not even be yourself. That is the problem with the accident. You could just go through it, and you roll through the motions. Not a big deal. You fight with your insurance kind of vibe, all the usual stuff.

Yeah, maybe your spouse is suffering from it and having difficulty. Like she doesn't trust you now or you don't trust you now or your kids, like, man, dad is horrible, and animals killed us, you know? Yeah. There could be a little bit more to it, you know? So you want to think of it too lightly but don't want to change your life the way you RV, you know exactly.

If you want to drive like a maniac, continue to do it. Remember, this article is here for you when it all falls apart. There you go. Just kidding. Oh my. Okay. So anyway, it's a great article again. It's on smart RV or.com under "enjoying the RV life." Now, we're going to move on to staying on the road.

And you know, with that being said, though, about the RV life, the season's ending here. So make sure you get any last-minute trips now while you still can. And I'm talking about the people, the states where you got to winter eyes and start snowing. Some people even bother.

I'm, you know, you're living in New Mexico, Arizona. No birds. Yeah, I like this one. But anyways, staying on the road, why do power cords, ins, and adapters melt or burn up? So we're talking about your RV, the 30 amp and 50 amp cord and adapters and ends that you plug into shore power, a generator, or whatever that external power source is.

It could be your neighbor's house or your home. You know, you could be stealing power from a line somewhere. How you're getting it—we don't care. These cords and ends burn up, and we see them quite often. It's not an uncommon thing. Some people are baffled by this because they don't understand. It's a safety issue.

The short answer is it's just a bad connection. But how do those connections become bad? I might be jumping the gun here, but think of one of the refrigerators in your house. When you plug it in for the first time, you must push it into the wall with your hand.

You must pull it out when you unplug it ten years later. You know, it's a hassle. That's because that cord and that outlet are only used once, and it's left alone. TV outlets are the same thing. Ten years go by if you put your TV on the wall and never move it.

If I decide to dust all the spiders and stuff out of the back—yeah, cobwebs and dead mice and things—they can play. Eric, where do you live now? Yeah. Of course. It is pulled out tight. That's because it's just sitting in there. It's not getting used all the time, like a vacuum cord. Over time, they get loose and sloppy.

You have to bend little prongs out or in to make them stay in tight. Right. Think of that now. Your RV. Yeah. It all also depends on you too. There are some things we do that cause problems. First, I've said this more than once: you need to know what you have in your RV, such as a 50 amp third service or a 30 amp 50 amp for prong, 30 is for three-prong.

An RV 30 amp is RV 30. AMP doesn't work on anything else. Any other three-prong outlets are usually 220V. An RV 30 amp is 110 volts, so it's important to know that because people try to make these things work, they cause problems. Now, the 50 amp is just a four-prong 50 amp.

It's very similar to a welding cord, a 50 amp welding cord, or a compressor that 50 amps an air compressor. It's more commercial and industrial if you will determine what you have and know what you have. It should be. I know my tires are black, and I have a 50 amp service.

I know my tires are black and have a 30 amp service. If you know those two things, you're right up there. You're an intelligent rear end. Yeah, no more than that. You're an expert rear right. All right. When you plug your 50 amp outlet or 50 amp cord into a 50 amp outlet at an RV park or your house.

It goes in tight. You have four prongs that hold it in place. It goes directly in, and it sits there. Doesn't do anything, and it just fits nice and tight. And it would be the same with a 30 amp. But there's a difference. RV parks have more 30 amp RVs at them than they do 50 amp RVs.

So, 30 amp outlets at RV parks typically wear out much quicker than their 50 AB outlets. And so when you plug in, like recently, in fact, our last episode, I think I talked about it, we are in Cardwell, Montana, at the RV park there, and you plug into a 30 amp outlet and start sparking an arc.

And as it's going in, which is not a good sign, a little something is one thing, but continuous because the outlet was so loose, and my surge protector was discolored and hot when we left two days later. No, boy, I knew it was going to be like that. I was testing the market or the waters to see what would happen.

So, boy, you know, take it to the extreme. But, with that being said, if you have a surge protector and you're plugged into an outlet like that, let's say it does melt. The end of the surge protector kind of sucks to have to cut off that factory and put on an aftermarket end.

Yeah, you can do it. But it kind of sucks. Anyway, back to the melting. So it's always bad connections, or you're taking a 50 amp and reducing it down to 30 amps, and where you're plugging it in, the outlets need to be tight, or even your 30 amp cord can be worn out, or the adapter. And that creates a loose connection.

You shouldn't see sparks; you might see a spark when you plug in, but you know you shouldn't be able to move it around. If you take the cord out, it shouldn't be hot. The prongs on it should be kept distinct. They must be less accurate. I hardly even look at the camera while I'm doing this.

Oh, I like you guys are listed. It doesn't matter. But we do put this on YouTube. Eventually, whether in La La Land, it's a podcast. I only have to look at the camera. Right. All right. Pearl's sidebar is there to distract me, though it's the connection. So your adapters are starting to wear out. Replace them. And when you buy adapters to go to, let's say, your house 110V, their typical house outlet, you know, you'd plug an owl lamp in, too.

So you get adapters for those who take your 30 amp to the 15 amp, which is what it's called. Those adapters. Some of them are like four or $5 three bucks on one of those ghetto websites—on the internet. They burn up very quickly. You typically want to buy a cord. Now Camco makes a yellow adapter. It's nice and heavy-duty.

It's about ten bucks, and it works well. So, it's not going to melt like the cheaper ones. The black ones especially. They're the ones that just melt right up. If you buy a pigtail like a 12 or 18-inch pigtail, they work a lot better than their heavier duty. They last and will last as long as you own the RV unless you lose it, but it's simple.

We go on forever, but you know, we're not. I'm not going to spend forever talking about this. So having those connections and also when you're going to shore power, you know, the more extension cords you have, the warmer the wire can get, and the more critical your connections when you plug into one another are tight. So, if you plug into your extension, you know your power cord with an extension cord; make sure it plugs in tight.

Because of those loose connections, especially over the long run, they will get hotter, hotter, hotter, and start to melt. If you're using an extension cord like a regular household extension cord, you know that you'd plug something into, like a drill or a lamp, to give you a little more length; make sure you use a heavy-duty one, preferably a 20 amp one that has heavier wires in it because they are a weak link to in the ends of those, things get worn out if you've had it for a long time., I have an extension cord guy I've had since I was 20 years old. I am Miller Payne, and I have a house in Cerritos, California. With it now wound a paint sprayer. So I was a pain on it makes us out in our warehouse here. I've seen it. You know it. It's worn out, but it works, you know, for what I'm doing.

But there is no way for an RV to plug it into shore power. Man, what it. So make sure you're using good cords because you start burning things up when you have bad connections. The downside to this can be that you might have a $6 adapter that starts to melt, but it can ruin your power cord, the nice factory cord, and then you have to cut the end off of it.

Put an aftermarket end on which they work, but it's not the same. And then, you're ruining it. Yeah. And you don't want to have to do that. And it could cause a fire, and you know, cause, well, you might have to call your insurance company a recovery effort. The RV accident we just discussed is your RV burns up your house.

Yeah. The other thing is your extension cords; that's what I'm calling them. Just your 15 amp extension cords. Buy good or heavy gauge ones, like 20 amp, and use them. Those are much better. They're better, period. You know, this heavier wire. But you don't have to do that for everything—just this one application. And try to avoid that, too.

If you use this regular 15-amp extension cord, sometimes your air conditioner might run on it, but it's not advisable because it creates more heat and burns up connectors. The other thing is adding a new one to your cord. Many of our RVs today have a cord that plugs into the side of a twist lock and a little ring that tightens up.

Sometimes, those end up burning up, and they get expensive. For many people, both pieces need to be replaced: the inlet and the cord in the receptor the cord in. People only want to do one, so they try that with one, and then they're back two weeks later with both pieces by and both now and replace the one they already bought for 50 bucks.

Right. Do it right. If there are signs that both sides are melted a little bit, you know, replace them. Don't cut corners because you'll probably be back at the store. Replace them with both pieces sooner than you think, and you'll spend your money again. You want to try to save money here but not be ridiculous and start a fire.

And then when you're putting a cord end on, if you're doing it yourself, yeah. Even if you have someone do it, you must ensure they tighten those wires. They must tighten them tight. Loose wires caused the problem, too. And you can't see it starts internally, so there's melting inside them.

It gradually works out, and then everything's melted or on fire. So, if you replace a cord end, ensure it is tight. And that would be for your home or whatever. Also, all the cord ends have a clamp that clamps them to the cable, so you want to make sure you clamp them to the cable super tight.

So, when you're pulling on the cable or the weight of the cable hanging out of the pedestals, do not pull the wires out of the connector internally. Yeah, that being said, those are excellent reminders. Now I know why I'm staring at this. A green thing on this monitor got my attention, driving me crazy.

So, now that we've covered power cords, adapters, and ends and why they burn up, you guys are experts here, so you can go to the RV park and be a fire marshal. Just kidding. Yeah. Maybe not. Yeah. Let the stuff burn. Oh, oh. Now, we're back at 10,000 subscribers on YouTube before the end of the year. So I did check today to see how many millions more we got, but I know it's increased.

So everybody shares our this podcast. Share our YouTube channel with everybody. You know, become a pest. Yeah. You get like you like you, so buy something online from that company. Now, since you like 65 emails a day, you must be there for the end of the year. Send all your friends and family 65 emails daily using the intelligent RV, your podcast, and our YouTube channel.

So, if you go to YouTube, type in the smart RV and your podcast, bam! There we are. And then there are videos. They're great videos. We'll have one out this weekend. Yeah, we got a little lax. We've been so busy with stuff lately, and we just had all the ordinary things coming up.

So, I need to catch up on some of our production and get videos, dots, and even those podcasts. I always do it at the last minute now. I am Russian. Sorry, guys. Yeah, we're losers sometimes. We're coming to the end of our season. So now we can get ahead of this and get back on track. So again, 10,000 listeners, right? It's easy.

NEXT STOP

All right. Now, let's go to the next stop. We will talk about Ron Hood, the older man in Whitehall. He might not appreciate that, but he is an older man. He's about 85 years old. Yeah. He gets around well, though, for an old-timer. Yeah. So, he is a volunteer at the Jefferson Valley Museum. Whitehall is now in Montana, 30 to 50 miles west of Bozeman on Highway 90.

Whitehall is a small town. There's not much there, so we went to Cardwell. Cardwell? There's nothing there besides an RV park, a general store, and a schoolhouse. But we just stayed at the RV park, and Whitehall is nearby. We wanted to check out Whitehall because we like all these small mining towns. We enjoyed the history and ended up at the Jefferson Valley Museum.

Now, this is what makes these small towns cool. Ron Hunt made Whitehall stand out to my wife and me—more than any other small town we've ever been to, no matter how cool the town was. So, the Jefferson Valley Museum is filled with history about Whitehall, what took place there, the people, all the faces, and the events over the years.

And we didn't know that. Ron greeted us because he wanted to give us a tour. And, you know, we were keen on a tour, to be honest with you. But, you know, it worked out well. I don't have the patience for that. I just do my own pace, you know, boom, boom, boom, or the old Boswell move on.

But he took us through it, and he showed us this museum, and he, you know, he went the detail, but he says, you know, the best thing to do is come back now and just take your own time and start reading all the stuff in there because there's a lot of articles, newspaper articles, excerpts from books. Some people have written books about Whitehall and some of the families there, you know, all the gory details from behind the scenes.

Alexis- Oh, wow.

Eric- And my wife says she's read one of the books. She's read another one. She said they're exciting. They're good reads. He's he grew up there. He was born there. And what was interesting is, you know, he was telling us stuff, and he likes points to this picture, and it's a gas station. And he goes, well, this is my dad's or my Paris gas station.

And they bought this. And, you know, at that time, it was just one room. And, you know, we didn't leave a bathroom or anything. And they lived there. You're like, wow. Yeah, it was pretty rough, you know. Eventually, they were to add a room here, a room there for a little more comfort and creature comforts.

But he says that's my dad there. And over here at the gas pumps, this gas truck or tanker is owned by so-and-so and those little legs. That's me. I was a kid back then thinking, wow, that's cool. Then he starts talking about people in the town, like one guy who owned a business and opened a gas station.

When he found out one of the highways was coming through, his name was sad and something or other, you know, Arabic or something like that back then. That's when, you know, you get people from all over the world, the United States, they are accepted. You see, they didn't live in all their little private communities. They assimilated. So, he bought or built his gas station.

It's just like the premier gas station; all these works of art were out on the pumps, with a canopy lining the inside. It's just unprecedented stuff. But, you know, he's pointing here now. This building used to be there. This is where Doctor So-and-so was. This is where he started. Then he moved from there to this building, and then such and such moved into his old building.

And then it burned down five years later. They had a lot of fires back then, probably bad electrical connections. You see, they didn't even have ads. So that's a warning for you. You will only find this in some towns you go to. But if you like only small villages and there's a museum, you know, from now on, we're going to ask, do you have somebody here that grew up here, that lived here their whole life for the history of it?

Or if you see some people that look like they lived there forever, and if you talk to them, a brief story is phenomenal. It brought Whitehall, Montana, from this town. It didn't even matter to us, to this cool little town. Now, that has some meaning. We're not going to move there or anything like that, but it's okay; that's a more relaxed place than we thought it was.

So the whole point is sometimes getting that history from somebody, that personal history from somebody who can bring it to life, can make that trip much better. So, a little reminder there. There's more to these towns. And sometimes what meets the eye. Okay. Now we're going to cruise on to RV envy. We're done with Whitehall.

So Ron audios, FYI. Yeah, we should probably send this to Ron Ike here. I should, we should. Yeah, that'd be nice. Thank you. He said he was asked to speak about the town at one of their museum meetings. It was so long that it turned into a book and CDs. Oh, wow.

And he says, I wasn't prepared for it, but it turned out well because he knows all the history. Yeah. He does. That's rare for an older guy to read. His memory was sharp. Yeah. You see, it's his life. Yeah. But even the museum itself, even if you went on a self-guided tour, it'd be cool to see a lot of old stuff there, that's for sure.

All right, back to RV envy. We are living in very unique times in this world. The United States is going through an election cycle. This is like no other election cycle. The economy is getting tough. People are losing jobs first. It's just like a downer of a show today. It is. What's wrong with us is that you have an RV, and that's the escape route.

You know, sometimes you just get in that RV, man. It's like a little capsule. You can just get away from everybody. Yeah, yeah, you can go to an RV park. You can choose to associate with people, or you can choose not to. You can go someplace and camp, or there's no one out, and just get away from people.

You know, I can think of all sorts of places like that. You know, maybe that's what you need sometimes to decompress because things are getting terrible in this world. Until this election passes, things will always be negative in an election year. But this one is a bit worse and a lot worse.

Don't let all of that just wear you down. You have to look at life as we move on. We just keep moving forward. These things are always going to be in front of us. There's always going to be some obstacle. Your RV is that outlet. So use your RV. Don't let everything in this world keep you from that.

It might be more challenging to afford or go on that trip, but just be more innovative with your money. Sometimes, being smart with money means paying more upfront than doing it twice. As I mentioned earlier in the course, you know, going cheap and only replacing one part of the problem, not both parts.

And you know, shopping online today, there's a lot of cheap stuff out there. It will save you so much money until you have to buy it again, and you buy the same one again. And okay, now this one will be better than you buy it again. And you know, there are websites selling stuff brought in from other countries.

It's just low-quality garbage, and the RV market is flooded. It's amazing how much junk there is out there. Every company in China that can make anything has our contact here; they ship it over and sell it. And a lot of these companies only exist sometimes. And that's the other problem.

You know, what kind of customer service are you going to get? What kind of quality are you going to get to? These companies even care about the quality if they get a constant flood of returns. Does it bother them because there's so much profit? And what does sell doesn't get returned? You have to think about that. And that might sound ridiculous, but you look at some of the big companies in the world today who get fined, you know, $1 billion.

They don't care because they made 10 million, 10 billion on the product they sold. It was illegal, right? You have to look out there when it's all relative. These are much smaller dollars we're talking about here. But don't buy stuff just to buy it again. Buy better quality items. You won't buy the top end but don't go to the bottom.

Yeah, see our cords, electrical items, and things like that. Yeah. Stay away from that cheap stuff. Buy the good brands. Now, with that being said, we've talked you out of doing anything because the world is collapsing before your eyes. Yeah. Just kidding. We're going to change up the show to enjoy the RV life.

From now on, we will have content about saving money as an RV. So we want to help you save some money. And sometimes things are obvious, and sometimes they are not. Some of the things we talk about will probably be obvious. We know that other things might not be, but we will start doing more research on that.

It might be insurance; it might be your aftermarket warranties, for which we already have a company. In the next episode, we'll talk about wholesale warranties and the service they provide. They're lower priced and offer better quality service, if you will, or products they sell. We'll work on this and help everybody save some money because it's crucial right now. Then, we'll just keep that going.

RV ENVY

So we're going to adjust, which will benefit everybody. All right. So now, regarding buying quality and saving money, you must slide out on the fabric if you go to SunProMfg.com. We have 14 slide-out awning fabrics of better quality than the factory's. But there are more expensive ones compared to the others.

Well, they're not 18 ounces or the least expensive on our website, but they're a good quality product at a good price. So, check it out if you need to slide down any fabric. You never know. Yes. And you have our great customer service behind it and our great warranty. Yeah. So that's where something is right there. We're Dunder Mifflin.

There you go, Dunder Mifflin. Oh, boy. So who's Mike and who's Dwight, and who's Pam? And all the others. Yeah, yeah. Figure that out later. Yeah. Let's chubby guy's name, Kevin. Yeah, I'm probably Kevin. Honestly. Yeah. This makes me think of that episode where he's carrying that big pot of chili into the office.

Don't sit on them. So I'm sat on the floor. I am so scooping it back. It's a Rose Kelly thing. Oh. Yeah. I mean, you were not in the office after all. All right, so one final call out to go check out the smart rv.com, the intelligent RV, or on YouTube. Boost up those subscribers. And, of course, share the podcast with everybody.

All this information is always on the website at the smart RV intercom, so check that out as well. Our next episode will be episode 161, and we are floating around between a couple of ideas. We have yet to have a heading or title for that episode, but we will undoubtedly return with it in two weeks.

OUTRO

Episode 161. We've had a great show today, and hopefully, everybody will be listening to get into weeks. In the meantime, go to YouTube and look at our channel there. This is Eric Stark with the SmartRVer Podcast. It's been great hanging out with you today, and I want to thank you for listening to the show.

So, if I don't see you on the road, connect with TheSmartRVer.com.