Looking to find a Line Side Lug Kit for an old Gould/ITE 200A Main Breaker

[MD Automation]

Looking for some possible help from members here for locating older lugs for the line side of a 200A Gould main breaker. Thinking maybe some here have either run into this problem before or have these parts in a pile of spare panels. Or preferably, know where to find either NOS Gould/ITE parts or a similar Siemens lug(s).

First and foremost, I hope this does not get looked at as a DIY post. I am not looking to replace this Main Breaker myself. I know a good electrician from work, who does mostly commercial work, but is willing to help with this residential problem - and I am trying simply to make the job as easy as possible by having all the parts he'd need ahead of time (and hopefully new). He would do the work, meaning pull the meter and swap new parts in. I am looking to do none of it myself, just helping him with parts because he's trying to do me a favor. He does not have a Siemens rep to contact.

The Main breaker in my home's panel is starting to heat up and show too much FOP at the top 2 lugs. Typical 200A service, AL 4/0 SE, meter outside and Main Panel inside directly behind it on the basement wall. Probably been going on for a while, but I first noticed the problem this past weekend when the temps were right around freezing and it was raining here in Maryland. This meant the the heat pumps (I have 2) would tend to go into defrost a lot and, in turn, kick in the electric heat. So at times the service would see loads that could be 70 or 80A easy for a few minutes. When that was happening, I saw temps on the top Line Side lugs of ~170F, hotter than I thought they should be. While I was initially troubleshooting this I saw a ~0.7 volt drop from the line to load side of both legs of the main breaker (when the draw was ~70A??). Running normal, with no big loads (like around 20 amps) the lugs cool right down to ~70F ambient. Measuring with a small handheld IR thermometer.



Normally, you would assume it's the connection under the setscrew loosening up around the 4/0 AL wires. But when things are heating up with medium sized loads (like 40+ amps), I measure no meaningful FOP (Fall Of Potential) between the AL strands and the lug itself. But I can probe the top of the slots on the breakers (typical quad 200A) that the stabs on the lug fit around. Earlier today, with a decent load of maybe 40 amps, I measured a voltage drop of around 0.5V between the breaker "slot" (circled in blue above) and the lug itself. So there is some heating going on at those 4 stabs between the Main Lug and the top slots in the breaker. Bigger loads mean more voltage drop and more heat buildup. The lug looks to be a cast part and the stabs (or what I can see of them) don't have that smooth finish like the normal bus stabs you see for the branch circuit breakers. So maybe just an old part starting to slowly corrode and heat up. You can see some of the discolored heating effects around the wire strands and setscrew from the lug getting hot.

The panel is an old Gould G2040MB1200 and the existing breaker is an EQ9483 (obviously no longer made, Siemens bought this line years ago). It's super easy to find a new Siemens 200A Main that is identical (MBK200), but it does not come with the lugs that would fit my old panel. It does come with some bus stabs shown below, but the ones I am looking for have (besides the obvious setscrew lug for the 4/0 wire) some features on the rear of the lug that fit into slots on the plastic tray on the panel. They slide up and down and help "locate" the wire / lug / stab portion of main breaker against that plastic panel backing.

Here is a pic of a replacement breaker with the new stabs...



and here are the instructions for this breaker with a new Siemens lug (not included) circled in blue...



Anyway - just curious if anybody has a good source for NOS Gould / ITE parts like this. Or knows they have decent ones lying around in a pile of parts. Siemens also makes that new lug, you can see it in the MBK200 instructions above (again circled in blue) but it does not come with the breaker and I don't have a part number for it. And it's not quite the same part - it does not have the stabs like the old Gould lug, but I think accepts the tang of the stabs that came with the new breaker. I'm guessing a re-design happened for this part years back? If this new Siemens lug would work, that's great... but again, I can't seem to find a part number for it. I've reached out to my local Rexell supply house, but thought also to ping people on this forum that might know what I am looking for.

Sorry for all the words! Thanks in advance for any help. Just trying to save a panel that is in otherwise really good shape. And again, not looking to do this myself, just trying to source new parts for a proper electrician

 

[LarryFine]

I would try re-stripping and re-making the connections first.

 

[MD Automation]

Thanks kindly Larry, and understood. I can discuss that with my electrician.

The panel is bottom fed and the service conductors have a decent loop up top where they bend down back to the main. So finding and extra inch or 2 to strip back to clean AL should be easy enough.

But I get the sense that if he comes out to help me with this problem, he'd rather just have new parts in hand. I can't blame him, just less risky. I already have a breaker, and if I can find a new lug kit, then it's all new parts and the list of things that can go wrong becomes very very short.

Removing and re-seating the breaker (and cleaning stabs if possible) could absolutely solve the problem, but the worry is if the stabs on the lugs have corroded and heat cycled enough they might break off. If corrosion is the problem, I certainly suspect it's the cast stabs on those lugs and not so much the mating blades on the breaker. I'd even be worried that the setscrew is seized in the lug and won't back out easily.

The worry about the overall condition of the lug(s) is why I was just pinging this forum to see if somebody has tackled this problem already and knew where to find a new lug kit that would work. Or maybe somebody has a favorite Siemens rep who knows his catalog inside and out.

Thanks again.

 

[petersonra]

Best bet is to call a supply house that sells Siemens breakers and tell them what breaker you have and ask for the lug kit for that breaker. If it is available they can get it for you. If not, you may have to have your electrician do something else like replacing the whole panel, but I would expect it is still available.

If you are really getting a voltage drop between the conductor and the lug it might just be corrosion that can be fixed by having your electrician cut off the end of the wire and re-terminating it. My guess is more likely a measurement error. If there is just a tiny amount of corrosion at either point where you attached the measuring leads, it could easily affect the voltage measurement but not really mean anything.

I would be more worried about the warm conductors. That is probably what you need to track down but it is very hard to tell you how from a distance.

 

[MD Automation]

Thanks Bob. Struck out today with the 2 closest supply houses I used to do business with when our small engineering shop was open. Neither sells Siemens stuff. But I will try again tomorrow, I now know of one local in Baltimore that does. Just hope to find a friendly counter guy, since they won't know me from Adam.

I feel pretty confident in my measurements, using my tired but trusty Fluke 77. Readings are also close to what I see using my (feel free to laugh) 60 year old Navy Surplus analog VOM! I'm like one of those old guys that won't part with his reliable Simpson (or equivalent).

--Bob (also)

 

[petersonra]

Maybe these people have the lug since they have a breaker.

Siemens EQ9483 Circuit Breaker Refurbished

Siemens EQ9483 Circuit Breaker Refurbished

www.circuitbreakerwarehouse.com

 

[MD Automation]

That's a good idea and I have already started to think about finding used parts if I can't locate new. Tonight I found this Siemens panel interior from a reseller...



which appears to have 2 pairs of the lug I am looking for. And they look to be in pretty good shape.

It's clearly a small panel (only 4 stabs) ... but it's a 200A bus with the same plastic back panel style as the original Gould / ITE ones. With slots that secure the lug. And I don't care about the bus, it's the lugs I need.

Looks to be a MLO panel, convertible for use with a main breaker. And there is a "bonus pair" of identical lugs at the bottom of the bus for what I assume are feed-thru lugs. Might take a gamble on these parts while I still look around for new ones.

Thanks again.

 

[letgomywago]

Might be better off just replacing the panel. The cost to do it in parts might be the same and you'd have a new buss bar

 

[MD Automation]

Thought I would post a follow up to the problem of sourcing the line side lugs for my (old Gould 200A) main breaker replacement. I'm sure it's nice to read about the resolution to a problem - but I'm also posting in case a real working electrician (not me!!) runs into this problem. As stated previously, the normal solution here would be a complete panel swap. But maybe there could be a situation you might have to deal with (budget conscious widower, or client looking to sell the house) where you want to try and keep the old Gould / ITE panel and just swap in a new breaker. In my case, the panel was in really good shape, but it was just slowly starting to turning into a tiny Easy Bake oven And a new replacement breaker was easy to find. Just not the lugs.

Anyway...

These are the original lugs from the panel...



You can see they have the lug AND the breaker stab(s) combined in the one part. At some point Siemens (which years back bought ITE which had bought Gould) redesigned this lug to separate the breaker stabs from the lug. The new stabs are pictured in the first post above and come with the replacement breaker, so I was looking for that re-designed lug. I had no luck finding any new lugs, either the original ones or the redesigned ones. The supply houses I have a relationship with do not (sadly) carry Siemens equipment, so there was no handy rep to call and find the old guy who knows these parts.

You can see the #s 6520114 and 6520115 molded into the old lugs.



The redesigned lug (w/o the stab) is made by Ilsco I think, but likely exclusively for Siemens. I found a small "I" inside a circle stamped in the part, and I see the same logo on some old Ilsco mechanical lugs I have lying around. But I had no luck finding anything like it in the Ilsco catalogs. It's certainly made specifically to fit inside the tracks in the plastic backpanel, and would be pretty useless in any other application.

Anyway...

After spending a few days trying to source new parts, I quickly found a retailer of used parts down in Florida that had exactly what I wanted. Specifically, I found the panel interior (guts) to an ITE / Siemens 4 space 200A convertible MLO / Main Breaker panel. It's pictured in post#7 above. (Shout out to S&S Electrical Supply in Palmetto FL). This particular panel had 4 of the lugs I wanted... 2 for the connection(s) at the top of the bus and another pair for feed-thru lugs at the bottom. I spoke with S&S on the phone before ordering to confirm what I saw in the listing was what I was going to receive. They looked to be in good shape in the pictures and what I received a few days later was indeed exactly what was pictured. All the setcrews turned clean and smooth and the lugs themselves were in fine shape. It came with a plastic backpanel that exactly matched my older Gould 40 space panel, my tray / bus was simply longer. So Siemens did not change much about the mechanical design of these panels for a long time, except for a small change to the main lugs.

This is a picture of what the new lugs look like, with the separate breaker stabs / finger(s) sitting in the bottom of the lug...



Anyway...

A week and a half ago I had an electrician come over to pull the meter and get the new breaker swapped in. Shout out to Steve!! - he did not even charge me extra when I helped I had met them thru work a few years ago as I was closing up our old Engineering offices and the company he's at does almost no residential work. But they knew I had the parts and a plan, and so they kindly helped me with a (hopefully) relatively simple main breaker swap.

Nothing went terribly wrong. The original setscrews were a little tight to back out after 30+ years of sitting still and then recently getting overheated, but they did "crack" free. (Could have cut the wire off if the setscrew did not back out). There is a plastic part that covers the top of the panel tray which I removed gingerly (it's easy to crack the fingers that snap it into place). Once that's off, the lugs slide up and off the tray. Steve trimmed back about 2 inches of the 4/0 service wires to get good clean ends and they were easy enough to re-bend to get the new (shorter) ends down lower. I decided to re-use the existing load side fingers that connect the breaker to the bus, figuring the less I took apart the better. This was a mistake, more about that later. I fitted the new stabs into the new breaker, connected the breaker to the load side fingers, slid the lugs down over the line side stabs up top and set the service conductors in the lugs. Tightened everything up.

We were just about to put the meter back in and I thought to pick up the panel deadfront just to verify everything was back where it should be. We were surprised to find the main breaker was a good 1/2" to 3/4" too high. Long story short, Siemens has redesigned some of their breakers to have extra plastic separating the (bigger) load side screws. The new breaker to bus fingers have a notch to accommodate this new longer part of the breaker case, and so you need to use the new fingers so the breakers sits lower into that notch and ends up where it used to be. Easy enough to swap the fingers out at that point. I was just a little nervous because I did not know exactly what this dark colored bolt (with the Belleville washer) screwed into behind the bus...



Turned out to be a captured nut, like a "PEM" nut fastener, clinched into the thin aluminum bus. In the pic above you can also see the notch in the load side fingers where they connect to the main breaker. So my lesson learned here is when the kit comes with new parts, use them! 110% my fault there, I had even noticed the new feature in the fingers, but did not wonder what they were for until after I put the whole thing together and found the main breaker sitting high.

Don't want to overwhelm this thread with too many words in one post, and kudos to anybody that has read this far. If people are interested in pictures of the parts that were heating up - or my thoughts on why Siemens redesigned those lugs to remove the stabs, I can follow up with more words. I am an engineer, so over-thinking and words are my thing!!

 

[MD Automation]

Also wanted to say that, if I was more courageous and just tore into this thing with out a clear path forward, one solution would have been to re-use the original lugs after cutting the die cast stabs from them. Obviously you'd need the rest of the lug and setscrew to be in good shape (mine actually would have cleaned up just fine). In the pic below, you can see that the shape of the flat bottomed floor is the same in the old vs new lug. Original lug in the back, newer lug in front. So the finger of the new breaker stab would have sat nicely in the bottom of the old lug after you removed the cast stabs. Then the service conductors get squeezed down against the new stab finger and you'd be good to go.



But I did not know that going in, so I took the time to find replacement lugs before I had somebody come over to pull the meter and help with the swap. I did not want to have an electrician come by without a clear idea - ahead of time - of what parts were coming off and what parts were going back in.

I am pretty rural, and with the meter sitting in the driveway, the panel in pieces, no lights, no water, no heat and an electrician wondering when he can go home...it's the wrong time to be "MacGyvering" a solution on the fly.

 

[kwired]

My suggestion would been to install something that doesn't have a plug on type main breaker.

Not real familiar with what Siemens has currently for 200 amp main but Square D or Eaton both have mains that bolt on in their "loadcenters" they currently offer.

 

[MD Automation]

My suggestion would been to install something that doesn't have a plug on type main breaker.

Not real familiar with what Siemens has currently for 200 amp main but Square D or Eaton both have mains that bolt on in their "loadcenters" they currently offer.

Absolutely. Siemens has totally redesigned their newer panels to have exactly that, a bolt on main. Integral lugs on the line side, bolts on the load side. Better design all around, and obviously easy to swap. Something like this...



But that would have been a whole panel change, something I was trying to avoid.

Feel free to laugh and call me stubborn! Because you'd be right.

 

[kwired]

Absolutely. Siemens has totally redesigned their newer panels to have exactly that, a bolt on main. Integral lugs on the load side, bolts on the line side. Better design all around, and obviously easy to swap. Something like this...

View attachment 2570141

But that would have been a whole panel change, something I was trying to avoid.

Feel free to laugh and call me stubborn! Because you'd be right.

I've encountered too many plug on style mains to even consider trying to repair one that is failing. Though in your OP that one actually has the plug on portion on the supply lugs. Usually it is the load side that plugs onto panel bus, and when they fail the bus is usually compromised also and installing a new breaker is only a temp fix and will fail again in a rather short time.

 

[electrofelon]

But that would have been a whole panel change, something I was trying to avoid.

Feel free to laugh and call me stubborn! Because you'd be right.

I would have just replaced the panel. It's really not that big a deal, I suspect you spent more time in digging and researching than just replacing the entire thing.

 

[MD Automation]

...I suspect you spent more time in digging and researching than just replacing the entire thing.

Guilty as charged!!

 

[MD Automation]

Usually it is the load side that plugs onto panel bus, and when they fail the bus is usually compromised

Yes, I assume you are talking about a main breaker that plugs into the panel bus with a hold-down kit. This actually is related to my problem in that both situations come from a manufacturer's desire to use the same style breaker in both main and branch circuits.

My problem, as you pointed out, is not the connection onto the panel bus, but it is caused because they wanted to try and use the same kind of breaker style in both places. So they had to engineer a lug and stab to accommodate the "plug-on" nature of those breakers. And most everyone has gotten away from that "commonality" design choice at this point. They just manufacture a purpose built main breaker.

 

[tortuga]

I would have just replaced the panel. It's really not that big a deal, I suspect you spent more time in digging and researching than just replacing the entire thing.

Yeah I would also. But posts like these a good for those 1 in 100 services that for whatever reason its a bear of an upgrade.

 

[MD Automation]

But posts like these a good for those 1 in 100 services that for whatever reason its a bear of an upgrade.

Thanks kindly and yes, as stated at the top of today's follow up - this is a "Look what I did" in case it helps anybody else out one day. I have to imagine there are a ton of these old Gould and ITE panels out there in the wild, and maybe somebody here stumbles across one that they need to somehow try and repair rather than do a panel change out - for whatever reason. Hopefully they find this thread useful.

For me, it's my own home, my time is free, and I am a knucklehead (that's quite a trifecta!!) ... so I tried to keep the panel and change just the breaker. Again, I have a thick skin so feel free to laugh.

I will post up in a bit why I think Siemens changed this lug - and eventually probably bailed on the whole plug-on Main Breaker.

 

[MD Automation]

I promise to stop posting about this main breaker swap! But I think there are some here that might be interested, as I am, in how things are made, the failure modes that can follow, and the redesign of parts over time to address problems seen in the field. This was certainly a part of my old job. If you are not interested, I will mis-quote the "Wizard Of Oz" to say "I'd stop reading if I were you. Seriously. If you are interested, the following observations are my 2 cents. And that's probably what they are worth

Take a look at the pics below and you can clearly see the blades inside the old 200A main breaker that mate to the stabs on the old lug were overheating. The first time I noticed them getting hot in early January, I measured 170 to 180F... pretty hot for a boring residential panel. This was with 2 heat pumps running in defrost (Heat strips on), so current draws around 80A easy just for those 2 loads. Anytime an oven or water heater was on with those heat strips, you'd be over 100 amps. You can see in the pics below the discoloring and corrosion on the breaker blades as well as the lug stabs. They clearly have been swapping a little metal between them.






The original lugs are die cast pieces that combined the lug and blade in one part. The problem with that design, in my opinion, is that first - the stab has a cast finish and second - when you torque the setscrew with a large service conductor inside, the entire lug / stab tends to rotate slightly in the plastic channel (clockwise) unless you are super careful to hold it back with a wrench to keep it straight (which certainly not every electrician is going to do). With the large wire now tightened in like a mechanical anchor, the lug / stabs then tend to remain tilted like that forever. Here is a pic of the original install, hopefully you can see the slight CW rotation of the lug AND the stabs.




Because the stabs do not enter the breaker blades nice and square, they don't maximize surface area contact - instead they tend to slightly spread the breaker blades apart and concentrate the connections on the top of one side and the bottom of the other. Which leaves some of the mating surfaces just a fraction of an inch apart and open to (slow but sure) heating and corrosion. Fast forward 30+ years and... voila!! A tiny furnace in the making.

In the weeks before I fixed this problem, I was at times measuring voltage drops of around 1 volt from the lug to the breaker blade, with current draws around 40 to 50 amps. This is not a FOP across the entire breaker with contacts and bimetallic strip - this is voltage drop up top from the stab to the blade. Parts that are in direct contact. It changed every time I put my amp clamp around a service conductor if I knocked the wire at all, the slight nudging made the connection a little better for a short time. But it tended to head right back to bad (and worse) in a few hours. Assuming the 50 amps is split between the shared poles of that quad breaker, that's an easy 25 watts, and even more with bigger current draws, dumped into a pretty small hunk of cast aluminum. Might not seem like a lot, but pick up the wrong end of a 20 watt soldering iron sometime!

Anyway.... I think Siemens changed the lug design to address this problem. By separating the breaker stabs from the lug, the lug is free to rotate slightly (when torquing the setscrew down) while the stab can stay square to the breaker - because now there is a little bit of free play in the stab finger that lays in the flat bottom of the lug. They are not locked together like the original cast part. In this pic of the new parts installed, maybe you can see the same tilt / rotation to the lug, but also see the stabs are now nicely squared up in the breaker blades. The black marks on the stabs are Sharpie lines I drew to know if anything moved after I put the whole together.



Besides addressing the stab alignment issue, taking the stabs off the lugs makes the parts "symmetrical" left / right wise. So you don't need to produce, and stock, 2 different parts. Just turn the lug upside down and it now it works on the other side. And also, the new lugs are (I assume) an extruded part now. Very simple to make, compared to a die cast part, like squeezing toothpaste from a tube, then cutting the part to length. Sure you still have to machine the setscrew thread, but overall, the newer extruded part is much much easier / cheaper / faster to produce in quantity than a die cast one.

Lastly, by making an "assembly" with the breaker stabs separate from the lug, the stabs can be made from rolled aluminum plate and then punched / formed into a simple shape. The surface finish on the new stabs is so much better than the finish on the original die cast stab. So it has better electrical connection to the breaker blades and is likely longer lasting. At least to my way of thinking. These new stabs have the same look and finish as the panel bus bars, and I assume should last as long too.

So there was a little "value engineering" I think at Siemens, to make the part smaller, easier to produce, and function on both left and right sides but... they also (imo) tackled a "flaw" in the original part by making the lug and stab(s) 2 different pieces, so they could rotate ever so slightly to keep the stabs in better contact with the breaker and have the stabs made from something better / smoother than a casting would be.

Fast forward a decade or 2, and most manufacturers don't even bother anymore trying to use a plug on design for a main breaker. Like Kwired was talking about in yesterday's comments, using the plug on stab for a main breaker (line or load, doesn't matter) seems to have fallen out of favor. Probably to address heating failures I think. Most manufactures use a purpose built main breaker now, with integral line side lugs and load side bolts. Replacing the plug-on main breaker design with a purpose built one was not done to save money, surely a new breaker design and stocked part is more expensive. One has to assume it was done to address failure modes seen over the years.

It was a combination of dumb luck and curiosity that led me to discover this heating in the first place in January. No smoke or smell yet, it was not going to burst into flames in a week, but it was not going to get better if I ignored it and surely to get worse as time went on. For the math oriented here, I think the problem was at the "knee of the curve" and was probably going to get worse quickly. Especially in the winter, anytime the heat pumps went into defrost. One of my heat humps has emergency heat strips rated at 14 KW / 60A. So even 4 or 5 minutes of a defrost cycle really was heating those poor lugs up.

To finish up with some data, after getting all the new parts in, I measure voltage drops across the main breaker now of around 0.025 volts with a load of ~ 50 amps. That is even across the entire breaker, (top) line to (bottom) load. So it includes the breaker contacts and bimetallic strip. Not sure what the accuracy of my old Fluke 77 is down in those weeds, but clearly it is showing much lower numbers than the 0.7 to 1.x volts from before. And my little IR gun shows almost no temp rise over ambient, maybe a degree or 2 if you run a decent load long enough. But that's (I assume) the bimetallic strip inside the breaker doing it's thing.

Sorry again for all the words!! Overthinking things like this is an occupational hazard with dumb engineers.