SmartPlug RV Power Cord and Black Inlet - 30 Amp - 30'

Video Transcript for SmartPlug RV Power Cord and Black Inlet Review and Installation

Hey guys, Kevin here with etrailer. And today I'm gonna be showing you how to install the SmartPlug, 30 amp inlet and power cord kit that comes in black, white, or chrome. So this kit is gonna come with your inlet and your power cord. The power cord itself comes with a protective cover as well but when it's not in use, the best part about this cable here in inlet, is that it takes all the weight off of the pins like you would normally have with your other standard RV power cords, and puts it onto the base itself of the inlet and the power cord. So that as time goes on, you're not slowly bending down your pins. Another thing with this is, that it has these clamps on the side, they hold it in place, and that way if you accidentally bump this, hit this, something else happens.

Maybe you got raccoons messing with your trailer, and coming up and climbing on stuff. It's gonna put the weight on the clamps and on the body of the inlet and the power cord instead of on your pins. So these clamps also will, indicate when you actually have this fully plugged in, there'll be a clicking noise. And then to remove, you'll just pull those clamps and pull it out. Another good thing about this design is the pins are actually a solid metal instead of curved, or cut out like you'd see with your standard twist plug pins.

So this is actually going to conduct more electricity so you're not gonna have that voltage drop like you would with your twist pins, and that's going to actually reduce the heat. So, if you look at the product page for this item or any of the other ones with it, it's gonna show you a little diagram of just how hot some of your standard plugs get, whereas this one's gonna stay nice and cool. So you don't have to worry about anything melting. The protective cover that we have on here also has a gasket on the back just to prevent any water from hitting your walls running down it and then getting inside. And on top of that, this cover is also going to go over your body of the inlet cover which is also going to help keep out any unwanted water.

There's a gasket on inside here as well which is gonna cover up these pins so that if you're not using this at all you don't ever have to worry about water getting inside and corroding those pins at all. So it's a fairly straightforward installation, you're probably gonna spend more time just trying to find exactly where you wanna place it, but once you're done with that, like on this build. So typically if you're doing on your RV you already had the hole, and all you're doing is just popping it in and screwing it in. Whereas this one since it's a build, we actually had to find a hole, or placement for our hole. So really you're looking at maybe 15 minutes of work here.

So now we've gone over some of the features. Let me show you how I installed this. So the first step to this installation is gonna be finding out exactly where you want your inlet to be. Typically on RVs, you'll see it on the passenger side. Unfortunately on our trailer bill today, we don't really have quite enough room, just because once we put this door up, it's only given us just a few inches in this cable that comes with it, is super beefy and it is not going to really cohesively fit with this door. So, what we're gonna do instead, is put it up closer up on the nose of our trailer here especially because we're going to wire all of this over to our battery management system that we're gonna install right on the opposite side of this wall here. So first thing you need to do, pick your spot, make sure that it's not gonna interfere with anything else, and then just we'll go on the inside, and start drilling out our hole. So I took our gasket here, and set it up where we are wanting to put it, and then I just trace the inside of it, so that we can get a good idea of where it's gonna sit. To start, I'm gonna make a small hole through, and just see where it comes out, just to make sure that we got it exactly where we want it. Just based on where the studs are in this trailer, I'm gonna lean more to our right side, 'cause I can't really go over or anymore here to the left if I need to, but I can more towards the right. So we're gonna make a small starter hole through here and see how it comes out. Alright, now we can go back on the outside and take a look, see if it's exactly where we want it. Alright, so after looking outside, I decided that I wanna move this over just a little bit. We are gonna keep this hole still, but I think it'll look a little bit more uniform with how it is outside, if we just move this over just a bit, and we can redraw our line. And I'm also going to use a level, just double check that I have this level, we don't wanna our inlet sitting in crooked. Okay, so since we have this nice diamond tread plate up front, I'm gonna actually end up cutting it from out here, I'm not gonna get too fancy, I'm not gonna try and cut it to the actual shape, I'm just gonna do just a straight hole here, just like you'd see on your normal RV if you we're replacing your current inlet with a SmartPlug. So to start, I'm gonna put a little divot here with our punch. Just so that the tip of this drill bit doesn't walk on me, and then we can start drilling in. Alright, now that we got a nice uniform hole here, we can test fit our SmartPlug. Fits in no issues at all, so the next thing we can do is put on that gasket that I was using as a template. We're gonna put that on first, just so that we get a water tight seal with our actual plug here. So let me go grab that, and then we'll start screwing it in. Okay, so now after our holding cut, we're going to put on our gasket here. One thing I do recommend doing is just kind of wiping off this area. You don't want any dust or debris or anything else from cutting the hole or any dirt that may be on the front of your trailer to interfere with the stickiness of our gasket here. We'll peel off the backing, and center it over our hole, press it into place. So now with this kit, it does not come with any self tapping screw. So you will have to purchase those separately. 'cause this kit is designed really for replacing your own RV inlet that you already had installed, but, we had some self tapping screws just laying around so, we're gonna use these today. Alright now that we got it screwed into place, we can take the cap off of our cable, plug it right in and you can see, no issues going on. Now we can go on the inside and handle the wiring. So like I said, with this kit, it didn't come with screws and it's also not gonna come with the wiring that would normally hook up to your converter or your control panel, whatever you have in your camper, but since this is a fresh build, we just don't have that, but I'm still gonna show you just how to hook the wires in. So first we're gonna remove this cover. It's just Phillip's head screw in the center Get it in place, take that off, and as you can see, you got your neutral, your power and your ground. And then, so this is our labeled color coded. Typically your AC wiring for your camper is going to be colored the same. But you would just insert your wire, your bare wire into here and then screw it, or tighten it down using the Allen wrench included in your kit, and then you'd run that over to your panel. Well, I think that about does it for our installation of the SmartPlug 30 amp power cord and inlet kit. My name's Kevin, thanks for watching..