Power lost to outlets on a slideout, solved it!

Here is what happened, what the problem was and how I fixed it.  My rig is a 2012 KZ Stoneridge, model 341K, 37 ft. three slides.

I lost all 120 Volt power to all the electrical outlets on one slide-out, but not the 12 volt power that operates the slideout itself. The refrigerator worked on propane but not on 120 Volts.  All other outlets in the rig worked fine. I checked all the breakers, fuses, etc. and all were OK.  Next I opened up one of the outlets to check if I had power to the feed wire to it, No power.

So I started by finding which power cable brought power from the main breaker box to that slideout.  Finally found it, and using a volt meter determined it had power coming out of that breaker at the main breaker panel, so I was stumped as to why I had no power to the outlets.  Started tracing that cable until it went up through the floor of the slideout and inside a cabinet under the stove.  Back inside the rig I had to remove a false floor panel to continue following it.  Right there it where I found a flat type of electrical plug.  The round power feed cable from the breaker box went in one side and a flat Romex cable out the other side going to the outlets.  I shut off the breaker to that cable and unscrewed the cover on both halves (male and female) so I could see the connections on each side.  II then turned the breaker back on and checked for power at the end of that cable, had 120Volts, but nothing on the other side going to the outlets.  There was the problem.

This flat connector used knife blades inside of it, so that when the wires on both sides were laid in and the covers were screwed down, the knife blades would squeeze together and slice into the wires and make the connection of the wires in the plug.  Well, the problem was this connector was designed for use with flat cable on both sides, not round cable on one side.  The result was that the diameter of the round cable was bigger than the connector was designed for.  Thus the connector's knife blades couldn't close completely.  So after a few thousand miles of shaking, it loosened up.  I suspect they used these connectors so that they could be easily connect these wires together after the slideouts were installed during production.  This is either a design flaw or someone on the production line was using the wrong type connectors.

I went to the hardware store and bought a standard plastic junction box, striped the wire ends, connected them together in the box with wire nuts and connected everything back up, and everything now worked fine.  This had taken about 3 hours as working under the stove in that small area was not much fun.

I then traced the power cables to the other two slide outs and found the exact same situation, although those were still working.  I replaced them too.

Hopefully the above may be useful to other people if they run into this situation.  Might be a good idea to check your rig before you have such a problem.

Bill Haas

2012 KZ Stoneridge 341K