Hi,
Thanks ag.
I did check the crimp and wire at the crimp site, and it looked exceptionally clean. That was surprising to me because the cord was hanging unused for at least 2 years now.
What it is starting to look like is something we didnt think of yet. I had it plugged in for about an hour now to test it again, and no signs of heating. Not even lukewarm. But now i have the socket split apart and open, so there is plenty of free air flow that easily reaches the metal that makes up the receptacle contacts.
But what else i did inadvertently was plugged the test plug into the socket that is CLOSEST to the wire, which was a big mistake because i am suspecting that the brass that makes up the contacts is the culprit. Brass has resistance about 4 times that of copper, and because it was totally enclosed it had almost no free air flow to cool it, and the plastic they used is very thick stuff (strong though).
That's my hypothesis, and so i moved the plug to the LAST socket at the end of the row of three sockets. Now the entire brass strip that makes up the contacts is involved in the conduction of the entire current, unlike before when the plug was right near the wire. So next i will test the temperature rise of the brass and see what happens. I just did this a few minutes ago so it's going to take some time before i see anything worth mentioning. But seeing the cord end cool for the very first time is a nice change.
If the hypothesis turns out to be true, then i guess i will have no choice but to change the ends when this happens. For this cord, i could have epoxied the socket back together, but even if that works i think i would be more comfortable with replacing the end entirely now, with one single socket.
Also if this turns out to be true it means that other cords made like this probably have the same problem, and the ones with the three sockets closely spaced will have the same problem only to a lesser degree, unless totally defective of course.
Does a little heating in the end mean the cord is no good? Probably not, if it is not too bad, but it could lead to faster tarnishing which might make it worse over time. This would lead to a bad failure after some time like 6 months, a year, maybe two years, etc. The way i see it is if we can find ONE cord that DOESNT heat up at all, then they all should be made to be at least as good as that one. That's the safest possible route i believe.