Hey guys, just finished putting together another mod for my obs 7.3 and figured I'd share it here.
(TL
R First; I added a recep and housing into my bumper so I can more easilly utilize my block heater without damaging the cord by not ziptying it up while not in use.)
Last winter I had to plug the block heater in a few times, and I would generally take the excess length of cord and coil it up into a loop, then ziptie it under the bumper while not in use. This becomes a pain real fast when you have to cut the ziptie every evening to plug the truck in, then ziptie it up again every morning before you drive off. Well, towards the end of winter I got lazy, and I left the cord to dangle without ziptying it. As it turns out, that was a bad idea. It ended up getting caught between the tire and the leaf springs on a tight turn, and the tire treads ripped the plug end right off.
Now of course, I probably could've just replaced the plug end and it would've been just fine. But I'm a little paranoid when it comes to my truck, and I didn't know what kind of damage could've been done to the wires inside the insulation. Were the any of the strands of copper damaged? Broken? Stretched? Who knows, I'm not an electrician! What I do know is I don't want to wake up to a fire in the middle of the night. I also wanted to avoid having to continue to cut and re-ziptie the cord every day. So I got to brainstorming a solution.
I found a forum post where some other guys had discussed using Marinco receptacles to act ass a pass through on the body or bumper. This gives you a nice convenient place to plug your extension cord in that's mounted in a fixed location. That way, when you're ready to drive off you just unplug, close the cover, and go. The only problem is I couldn't find one that had a true hinge on the cover. Everything I saw had a rubber cover that was connected to the housing by a rubber strap. And I didn't trust that cover to stay in place when I'm going 70mph down the highway. Again, it probably would've been fine, but I'm paranoid so I overengineer everything. Bottom line: I wanted a similar housing with a true spring loaded hinge holding the cover down. Thus began my epic quest to find one. It was NOT as easy as I thought it would be.
I found another forum post where someone had used a kenworth receptacle on the front of his bumper to do exactly what I was going for. But it was a chrome receptacle. This was fine for him because his bumper was chrome. My bumper, however, it black. Did I mention I also like my truck to look good? So I searched for several more hours trying to find a similar receptacle in black, made by a reputable manufacturer, with a cover that had a proper spring loaded hinge. Eventually I stumbled onto a website called midwest bus parts (or something like that) and found that they had a recep housing in stock made by zerostart. It was EXACTLY what I was looking for. I ordered that, plus the recep itself, and a rubber weatherproofing boot. I also got a new block heater cord from riffraff.
When everything arrived I replaced the entire block heater cord, secured it in place, routed the cord end over the crossmember and down next to the driver side of the front bumper. I opted to put the plug housing in on the side of the bumper, as mine is a tube bumper and is round on the front, but the side is flat. It also is a few less steps to get to it. Not much, I know, but hey, laziness is what got me into this mess in the first place. So anyway, I drilled the hole for the housing and bolted it in, using a little gasket maker to fill the gaps between the diamond plate of the bumper and the flange on the face of the housing. I then took the end of an extension cord that I had acidentally cut a few days prior while trimming my hedges, and used it to wire up to the back side of the recep. I did this rather than cutting the brand new block heater cord from riffraff and wiring it up directly for 2 reasons. 1) that way I didn't have to destroy a perfectly good cord. And 2) if I ever need to remove the bumper, all I have to do is pull 2 plugs apart rather than taking the whole recep out of the housing and/or disconnecting all the wiring. Then I coiled up all my slack and zip tied it to keep it up high and out of the way of the tires. I also added some wire loom to the short piece of extension cord to protect it. The riffraff side of the cord already had wire loom. To finish it all off, I enclosed the two plug ends in a waterproof plug case that is commonly used for protecting outdoor christmas lights. I think it all came together quite nicely, and aside from the time it took me to find the parts and get them in, it was also a fairly quick and easy job.
Anyway, I figured I'd post this up seeing as we're now going in to the winter months, and with any luck maybe it'll help out somebody else who's had similar frustrations! Take care guys and safe wheelin'.
(TL
R First; I added a recep and housing into my bumper so I can more easilly utilize my block heater without damaging the cord by not ziptying it up while not in use.)Last winter I had to plug the block heater in a few times, and I would generally take the excess length of cord and coil it up into a loop, then ziptie it under the bumper while not in use. This becomes a pain real fast when you have to cut the ziptie every evening to plug the truck in, then ziptie it up again every morning before you drive off. Well, towards the end of winter I got lazy, and I left the cord to dangle without ziptying it. As it turns out, that was a bad idea. It ended up getting caught between the tire and the leaf springs on a tight turn, and the tire treads ripped the plug end right off.
Now of course, I probably could've just replaced the plug end and it would've been just fine. But I'm a little paranoid when it comes to my truck, and I didn't know what kind of damage could've been done to the wires inside the insulation. Were the any of the strands of copper damaged? Broken? Stretched? Who knows, I'm not an electrician! What I do know is I don't want to wake up to a fire in the middle of the night. I also wanted to avoid having to continue to cut and re-ziptie the cord every day. So I got to brainstorming a solution.
I found a forum post where some other guys had discussed using Marinco receptacles to act ass a pass through on the body or bumper. This gives you a nice convenient place to plug your extension cord in that's mounted in a fixed location. That way, when you're ready to drive off you just unplug, close the cover, and go. The only problem is I couldn't find one that had a true hinge on the cover. Everything I saw had a rubber cover that was connected to the housing by a rubber strap. And I didn't trust that cover to stay in place when I'm going 70mph down the highway. Again, it probably would've been fine, but I'm paranoid so I overengineer everything. Bottom line: I wanted a similar housing with a true spring loaded hinge holding the cover down. Thus began my epic quest to find one. It was NOT as easy as I thought it would be.
I found another forum post where someone had used a kenworth receptacle on the front of his bumper to do exactly what I was going for. But it was a chrome receptacle. This was fine for him because his bumper was chrome. My bumper, however, it black. Did I mention I also like my truck to look good? So I searched for several more hours trying to find a similar receptacle in black, made by a reputable manufacturer, with a cover that had a proper spring loaded hinge. Eventually I stumbled onto a website called midwest bus parts (or something like that) and found that they had a recep housing in stock made by zerostart. It was EXACTLY what I was looking for. I ordered that, plus the recep itself, and a rubber weatherproofing boot. I also got a new block heater cord from riffraff.
When everything arrived I replaced the entire block heater cord, secured it in place, routed the cord end over the crossmember and down next to the driver side of the front bumper. I opted to put the plug housing in on the side of the bumper, as mine is a tube bumper and is round on the front, but the side is flat. It also is a few less steps to get to it. Not much, I know, but hey, laziness is what got me into this mess in the first place. So anyway, I drilled the hole for the housing and bolted it in, using a little gasket maker to fill the gaps between the diamond plate of the bumper and the flange on the face of the housing. I then took the end of an extension cord that I had acidentally cut a few days prior while trimming my hedges, and used it to wire up to the back side of the recep. I did this rather than cutting the brand new block heater cord from riffraff and wiring it up directly for 2 reasons. 1) that way I didn't have to destroy a perfectly good cord. And 2) if I ever need to remove the bumper, all I have to do is pull 2 plugs apart rather than taking the whole recep out of the housing and/or disconnecting all the wiring. Then I coiled up all my slack and zip tied it to keep it up high and out of the way of the tires. I also added some wire loom to the short piece of extension cord to protect it. The riffraff side of the cord already had wire loom. To finish it all off, I enclosed the two plug ends in a waterproof plug case that is commonly used for protecting outdoor christmas lights. I think it all came together quite nicely, and aside from the time it took me to find the parts and get them in, it was also a fairly quick and easy job.
Anyway, I figured I'd post this up seeing as we're now going in to the winter months, and with any luck maybe it'll help out somebody else who's had similar frustrations! Take care guys and safe wheelin'.
