That still blows my mind...
I know from looking in my panel that the buss and the punched plate the breakers sit in is all one piece.. there is no lil' 8-32 screw bolting the plate to the buss.. Come to think of it I have never seen any screws bolting the punched plate to the buss in any FPE panel I have been into or installed... I DO have an old one that I think dates back to the 50's or so I am going to look at and see what it looks like just for " ha-has"..
as for thenm not tripping... Must be a difference between the newer stuff and the old, and the stuff made for Canada vs the stuff that is made in the USA..
Albeit the ones here in Canada are
S... L... O... W to trip I have yet to see one that hasn't I have even had the 2-pole 20 that used to protect my old 2-ton Lennox A/C trip every time there was a momentary power interruption and the compressor tried to re-start while there was excessive head pressure at the compressor.. ( Really fellas, it DID trip, and more than once too!!! I am not on cheap drugs or anything!!!!).. There are many many instances where I can say they did their job, BUT I WILL say I did see where a neighbour plugged in 25 amps worth of Christmas lighting into a 20 A receptacle and circuit, protected AND controlled by a " NA-20" FPE breaker.. Ya know the "wide" ones that are also stamped "SWD" for switching duty.... Well, it took about 4 hours for the bugger to trip, but without a word of a lie, nothing seemed excessively warm to the touch, and I repeated the " test" the next night with the same results, nothing seemed to get much hotter than " normal", well "normal" to the touch anyway
Also Tried running 30A through 1/2 of a wide 2-pole 20 A FPE breaker once.... For "ha-has" yet again...Took 8 mins to trip,. and less after each reset that as the innards of the breaker were still warm..
BUT believe it or not the bugger tripped repeatedly!!
Sorry, I know there are MANY out there that think FPE are crap, and well, you probably are right, I just don't want you all to think I am off my rocker for what I have stated above, but I just haven't seen the problems I have heard so much about... Trust me though when I do I will fess up that I saw an FPE go bad and I will try and get pix to boot!!
A.D
