Murray Main Breakers

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tonype

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Looked at a home yesterday - even before I had a chance to look in the electrical panel, power shut down. At 1st I thought there was a power failure in the area, then saw the the main tripped.

The main could not be re-set - a Murray 100-amp breaker (did not get the model number) from the 1970s (1977).

I thought I once heard (but cannot remember where) that Murray main breakers were sources of problems, but cannot find any info of my records (or on this forum).

What has been others experience?
 
I replace a lot of the Murray 200's.

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Don't see any 100's around here.
 
Yep. A simple main change turns into a panel change when you find out the buss is wrecked and siezed to the breaker. The buss gets all twisted up when you try and pull the breaker off of it...:roll:

Which makes me wonder, does anyone make new guts to fit these panels? The last one I did was a 200 amp 28 space panel with a 13"x24" can. That's way smaller than the cans Siemens uses now.
 
Cow said:
Which makes me wonder, does anyone make new guts to fit these panels?
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Have you tried flipping the present guts? If the panel isn't full, or you don't hate tandems, you can often do this.

You might even be able to leave the old main in place if you can't remove it, if it lines up with the twist-outs.
 
I always use this an an opportunity to sell a new service/panel.

I flipped the bus over on time in a pinch. In this particular panel it worked like a charm. I wrote it up as a temp repair and clearly marked "brurned bus" on bottom of the the dead front.

In another case in a property I own, I used some bus from another panel that I had to cut a few spaces off. There were too many issues involved to get it permitted and changed out while keeping the business open, and it was the middle of summer in AZ....and we were really busy at the time, and....I could keep up with the excuses all day.
 
LarryFine said:
Have you tried flipping the present guts? If the panel isn't full, or you don't hate tandems, you can often do this.
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That was our first thought. But the bottom few buss stabs were notched for twin breakers and we didn't want the 200 amp breaker using those "less than complete" buss stabs.
 
Cow said:
That was our first thought. But the bottom few buss stabs were notched for twin breakers and we didn't want the 200 amp breaker using those "less than complete" buss stabs.
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How about just moving everything down two stabs? Drilling and tapping a new hold-down screw hole should be the only work.
 
We did this breaker swap about 2 weeks ago Larry and I can't recall if that was a possibility or not? I'll have to remember that though in the future, this won't be the last time we swap a Murray. Thanks.:smile:
 
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