Zinsco failures??? I've encountered too many to remember. With the buss and the breaker contacts not seeing eye to eye on their purpose, I've yanked and relocated at least 50 or so 15 & 20A twins, maybe 20 or so 30A, 40A & 50A twins, a 55A(!)full size, 17 - 90A 2 poles from 3 switchgear sections in a mobile home park (replaced the buss on that one as well, too many 100A mains to count(most turned into panel changeouts) 9 - 200A (I forget the type,looks kinda like a Bryant BJ2200 from the front) Zinsco has made me ALOT of $$$
Then there's the prehistoric ones with the fork tabs right off the load side of the meter
people got
really creative when they wanted another breaker shoved in those things, usually a bite out of the outside cover will be present where someone made screwdriver contact to the outside cover while on the unfused fork terminals and likely saw spots for a few hours afterwards
I never came across too may FPE buss failures suprisingly.. maybe about 10 so far (I think they were all on the skinnies 30A and up) Most FPE probs I remember were internally in the breaker.
Funny to notice no one brought up the POS Crouse Hinds and Challenger skinnies which you could pretty much make your own combination, you could supposedly place 2 separate thin breakers on the same stab if you had a right side and a left side contact combination.. I've replaced TONS of those with MP-T's and QP-T's over time.., suffering from poor stab contact and arcing into uselessness.
I fully agree on the GE THQP's being good for nothing besides target practice.. I've broken more of the cheezy small plastic piece on the bottom under the terminal than anything else
I've also seen more than enough THQP's with "bubbling" on the side indicating a huge amout of heat buildup within the breaker itself.. More than enough that I wouldn't ever install a GE panel.
Bulldogs seem to seize up and fail to reset mostly from what I've seen.. Remembering that Pushmatic was (and is to this date AFAIK) the only resi bolt-on panel out there. therefore your contact with the buss was as good as you were at tightening the screws down
(which I've snapped the heads off more than once
always a good idea to shut the panel down and run a tap through the buss hole if possible) Pushmatic breakers in coastal cities seem to collect unbelievable amounts of sand through the bottom vent opening also...
Anything else, I've seen about 5 CH style panels lose their mains in a spectacular display of just how much fault current can be at a resi panel. 3 Wadsworth panels that were simply beyond their expiration date, maybe 10 Square D XO panels suffering from the same as above. a
strange looking Frank Adam panel which I couldn't locate anything for and ended up replacing. Some multi-breakers from Trumbull, SQ D and CH, none of which failed to do anything but reset. Even a couple QO panels here and there with buss/breaker failures..
I'd get into the aftermarket (Connecticut Electric et al) replacement crap, but my hands are starting to cramp