SmartPlug RV Power Cord and Inlet Upgrade Kit - Gray Inlet - 30 Amp - 30'

Video Transcript for SmartPlug RV Power Cord and Black Inlet Installation - 2007 Starcraft Homestead Lite Fifth Wheel

Hey guys, Kevin here, etrailer. Today I'll be showing you how to install the Smart Plug Power Inlet and Cord here on our Starcraft Homestead 5th Wheel Trailer. So our neighbor today wanted to upgrade from his old pull-out RV power cord up to something a little bit better. There are a few options when it comes to that, typically what you're gonna see on most campers is that twist-lock, so the issue with the twist-lock is the prongs really just aren't big enough and they don't provide as much of a secure connection onto your power cord. So you end up having a lot of heat generating on that and what can happen, is that it can burn out that inlet and then 'cause a fire inside of your camper. One of the really nice things about our Smart Plug cord is that it has this LED indicator light here, as you can see it's blue, that indicates that power is flowing correctly, from our shore power source.

If this LED indicator was red, we would know that there's a reverse polarity issue and that we would not wanna hook up to our camper. As you can see, on the side, there's gonna be two indents where we'll have these nice clamps that are gonna click onto there and prevent our power, cord from popping out of place. Gives it a nice, secure connection. You don't have to worry about anybody tripping over the cord and knocking it out or damaging the prongs inside because those prongs are nice and thick and so are these latches. When not in use, you can easily cover up the ends on your cord here, with the included case.

It just simply pops on and latches on with those two latches right there. And that's gonna prevent any water from getting in here and ruining our power cord. Our Smart Plug inlet is gonna come with a nice cover that easily pops on and locks in place and on the inside, it's gonna have a gasket that's also gonna protect our power inlets so we don't have to worry about any water getting in there and then also on the inside, connecting up to our trailer, it's also gonna have a nice gasket as well, so that we make sure that, there's no issues with any kind of water damage happening. As you can see with this one, we have white, it does also come in black, stainless steel, as well as a gray cover, so that you can match the aesthetics of your trailer. As far as installation goes, it is super simple.

The hardest part is really just gonna be making sure that you can cover up that old hole. So to begin our instillation, we're gonna have to first remove our old outlet. So to do that, we'll pull the cover off, and we'll start taking our screws out. So we may also need to just grab a trim panel tool, which is just a plastic pry bar, and kinda work this out. There we go.

Now that we have our power inlet out, let's go ahead and just kinda scrape off all that butyl tape and clean up the hole right here. We're gonna make sure that when we put our new inlet on, that it's gonna fit nice and secure up against this without anything kinda, letting any of that water through. So, as you can see, our hole is quite a bit bigger than our new Smart Plug Power inlet so I am gonna have to build a little blank to just kinda sit on here and it's gonna cover up that hole and I'm gonna cut a little hole inside of that so that it'll actually fit our inlet right here and then allow me to screw it to that blank. So I went ahead and made my blank, I cut a little hole out, I wasn't too clean with the inside of it, but that doesn't matter because when we stick our plug in, you're not gonna see any of that anyway. But I also went ahead and drilled out four holes 'cause I'm gonna mount this to the wall first, it's gonna cover up that hole and then we can mount our Smart Plug into that so on the backside, I went ahead and stuck butyl tape around it, I'm gonna peel that off right now, that way we can stick it on here and that's gonna hold that on here and it's also going to prevent any water from getting back behind this plate right here. And any of the threads of the screws, it's gonna sink up all inside of that and just give ya more water protection that way you don't have to worry about water leaking in and ruining your walls or getting into your electrics, maybe rusting out your terminals here. So, we're gonna go ahead and take that butyl tape off and get this mounted up on our wall here. So I got my backing off, I'm gonna go ahead and kinda get that how I want it to sit. That looks good right there. And I'm just gonna press this down on here, get this nice and sealed up. And then we can take our screws, I'm just using those same mounting screws that we had from our old inlet. So your inlet is gonna come with a gasket, we're gonna go ahead and peel off our 3M backing here. And that sticky side is gonna go onto our blank. And put our non sticky side down on our inlet and put that in place. Just kinda press on that a little bit, let that glue activate on the back of our gasket. And now we can go ahead and secure our power inlet into our blank here, using some screws. I'm just taking some from that we already had laying around. I'm just gonna take my trim panel tool now and just cut off that excess butyl tape. So typically when I'm installing a Smart Plug, we can kinda come through the backside to hook up the actual wires. Our neighbor today has already made some modifications to the cabinet, where the actual cord sits. So, we're not able to access that without ripping out what he's done to make his water heater work. So we're gonna go back outside, we'll pull off our plug, and then we'll pull that cord out and we'll just cut it from there and splice it in. So now we're gonna go ahead and cut off our cable. I'm gonna leave about a foot here. Start cutting in. Wanna make sure that you have your power off before you go ahead and do this and that you're not connected to shore power at all. And then we can start stripping back the casing right here, so that we can actually get to our wires. Get that out of our way. On the back of your Smart Plug, you're gonna see a green terminal, a white terminal and a black terminal. That's gonna be where you stick your cables in and then you'll tighten it down with an Allen key on that little screw right there. To get our wires ready, I'm gonna strip back some of these casing as well. One out, and then we're gonna twist that up, get some more strength before we stick it into our power inlet. All right, make sure all of that is nice and twisted up, go ahead and start sticking in our cables. And tightening it down with our Allen key. Now we got our connection made, we can go ahead and stick our inlet back in place. All right now we're gonna go ahead and take some non-sag sealant and we're just gonna go ahead and go around here. Well, I think that about does it for today's installation of the Smart Plug, RV power inlet and cord here on our Starcraft Homestead 5th wheel trailer. My name's Kevin, thanks for watching..