Fpe stab lok

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Joseph Alexander

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I know that much has be written and said about stab lok breakers and zinzco etc... I know about the investigation in 1984, but has the CPSC or any authority officially said that these breakers are bad and should be removed from service?
Thanx, Alex
 
Here is some info from CPSC. It seems they feel it isn't warranted.

It also appears that most of the trouble was with DP breakers.

One also must remember that the breakers affected were from the 80's. IMO, some people make lots of money scaring clients into a panel change when it may not be warranted. I will get grief from this statement I am sure.

From an electrical safety standpoint, the most significant hazard identified in these CPSC-sponsored tests is that many of the two-pole FPE Stab-Lok? breakers may jam when trying to trip from overcurrent on one pole. This is due to mechanical friction in the common trip mechanism. Once the circuit breaker jams, its contacts will remain closed no matter what the current loading. This is serious -- a total failure that disables the protective device for that circuit. Essentially, the jammed breaker is exactly analogous to the "penny behind the fuse". This type of failure occurred in about 10% of the two-pole breakers.
Click to expand...
 
Just one?

I've replaced an entire apartment project's FPE out, there were multiple single pole breakers that didn't function anymore that were installed in the 70's. The larger project was started by a few that didn't trip or wouldn't reset any longer. The shot heard round the neighborhood was a degraded panelboard that faulted to ground and blew the utility transformer (twice); the 90A 2-pole breaker supplying the panel never tripped.

From a mechanical standpoint, probably 40 of 150 feeder breakers no longer functioned.

I think Joseph probably needs to determine if the breakers he is looking at are beyond their useful life or not, and not get too wrapped up in whether some official entity has declared it to be so. No matter what the brand is, used up is used up.

It seems to me that I dug up a lot of dirt on FPE back when I was engaged in that apartment job, but it looks like I didn't start a thread on it back then. I did find a wealth of information about it at the time, beyond what has been found so far.
 
Since we cannot see inside the breaker and the plastic seems ok, the terminal screws not discolored how can one tell what the useful life is. Is it 40 years or 50 or maybe 30?
 
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