zinsco 2 pole breaker

[cjbouchard@bergco.com]

Hello recently I was called out to a friends house because They kept losing power to the whole house What i found was the old zinsco panel in good shape . although the 2 pole 60 amp breaker kept tripping, I checked all the lugs and neutrals inspected the Buss for hot spots and took amp readings on all the branch circuits all looked great So I reset the breaker and within about 10 minute it would Trip again, Umm the 60 amp 2 pole was tripping with hardly any load on it ,so my thoughts are that maybe one of the branch circuits it feeds is faulting out so i started turning off each branch circuit and resetting the 60 amp breaker to isolate the problem and it still it keeps tripping I have never experienced a zinsco breaker to trip with no load or fault on it before the zinsco breakers tend to not trip at all until thay burn up .I Did my due diligence to tell my friend to replace the panel but thats a no go ,I told him Replace it Now or we will do it after your house burns down. Besides the point has anybody experienced this problem of a breaker tripping with no load on it ? I will replace the breaker this after noon and hopefully that fixes the problem.

 

[qcroanoke]

Happens all the time. they just go bad.

 

[cjbouchard@bergco.com]

I replaced the 60 amp 2 pole and everything seamed to be fine but the friend called me later said it was still tripping Went back over there and took some more amp reading and still i have found noting out of wack avg amps is 40 amps with every thing running But after resting the breaked give it about ten min and it trips out .

 

[hbiss]

Did you check the buss for signs of over heating? I agree, that panel needs to go as well as the 60A service. Minimum is 100.

-Hal

 

[ramsy]

..I Did my due diligence to tell my friend to replace the panel but thats a no go ,I told him Replace it Now or we will do it after your house burns down..

..But after resting the breaked give it about ten min and it trips out .

Bolted-fault spikes can be faster than your CLamp meter, and intermittent if subject to vibration, remodel wiring, or HVAC capacitors.

If you tell people to replace their panel before troubleshooting the wiring, breakers, or loads, you might be a panel flipper.

Panel flippers don't check inside wiring, since they either won't fit in crawl spaces, or never cared to learn.