How to clean dirty and oxidized electrical plugs to prevent heat damage?

Wayne

Wayne

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Staff member
There are plenty of pictures of melted and burn RV plugs out there on the internet. Thankfully I don't have one to show you. I believe the primarily cause of burned plugs is poor contact in the plug leading to resistance and heat.

I just took a look at my almost three year old 50 amp cord and at first glance the spades look clean. However, a close-up picture shows a nice thick layer of oxidation.

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This got me to thinking about how to keep the ends clean? I guess they could be mechanically wiped with a rag or maybe even steel wool. But it's not really possible to mechanically clean the female ends mechanically, at least not very well.

My searching led me to DeoxIT D5 https://caig.com/deoxit-d-series/ so I bought some to see how well it cleans the plugs. Has anyone here used it?
 
I've seen South Main Auto and WatchWesWork use Deoxit, never used it myself.

Failing that, some 220 or 400 grit sandpaper should make short work of it.
 
And be sure to coat them with dielectric grease.....not :unsure:

Thanks for the post, need to look at mine.
 
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I got the DeoxIT and gave it a try. First I just sprayed it onto the contacts to see what it would do. It doesn't really do much without some mechanical help. I let the plug dry and got some steel wool and tried cleaning with just steel wool. The steel wool certainly takes some oxidation off, but it would take a lot of scrubbing to completely clean the plug. Next I tried the DeoxIT with steel wool and that is the ticket. With the mechanical help of the steel wool, the oxidation comes right off.

Before cleaning:
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Steel wool only:

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DeoxIT and steel wool:

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DeoxIT really does work, it just needs a bit of help.

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