" All 3 wires came out pretty easily. I find this a little disconcerting."

Disconcerting?  More like terrifying!  120V is nothing to play with.  I too would wonder what else the PO did.

And, as a safety note, it's not just our beloved Westies... when we bought our 40 year old bungalow, I found that several of the wall outlets in the house ran warm, and one gave off sparks!  You know which ones I opened up immediately for inspection and re-tightening - but over the first year, I opened all of the outlets for re-tightening.

James
Ottawa, ON

> Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2015 10:28:31 -0800
> Subject: Re: Canadian Westfalia Shore Power Cord Warning
> From: musomuso@gmail.com
> To: jk_eaton@hotmail.com
> CC: vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com
> 
> Thanks James.
> 
> For sure re: clamp. I didn't think it was involved in electrical
> continuity. I just wanted to clarify that the boot had failed. And
> yes. The white neutral wire had poked out of the broken boot.
> 
> All 3 wires came out pretty easily. I find this a little
> disconcerting. Like what else did the PO do? Oh I know. They installed
> a really cheap cigarette lighter socket! The light bulb socket on it
> recently failed.     ;)
> 
> 
> On 2/2/15, James <jk_eaton@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > The clamp holding the boot is not the problem - that clamp is not meant to
> > have anything to do with electrical continuity, only to keep the wires lined
> > up with the screw terminals, and to reduce, a little, the tendency for the
> > wires to shift when people mistakenly unplug by pulling on the wire, not the
> > plug.
> >
> > Your failure is an electrical classic - that right hand terminal was not
> > properly tightened, and the wire that was on it (the white one that poked
> > out of the boot?) came loose.  But before it came completely loose, it was
> > touching the right hand terminal well enough to conduct some electricity -
> > but poorly enough that there was a measurable resistance across the wire to
> > terminal junction - probably about 0.5 to 1 ohm.  Not much, and if you only
> > ran a lamp, you'd not notice the plug heating up, but the power lost across
> > that connection rises with the square of the amperage flowing through it, so
> > if you go from 0.5 amp to 5 amps in a 0.5 ohm connection, you go from 0.125
> > watts of power to 12.5 watts - the first you'd probably not notice, the
> > second follows the metal blade of the plug and melts the next connector
> > along!
> >
> > Your advice, though, is right - check your connectors, plugs and outlets.
> > And if there are any screw terminals among them, re-tighten them.  If they
> > seem corroded, open them up, scrape clean, re-connect and re-tighten.
> >
> > And if a plug ever seems even remotely warm to the touch, inspect it pronto!
> >  Replace it if even slightly in doubt.
> >
> > James (Instructor in Electro-Mechanical Engineering)
> > Ottawa, ON
> >