ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area "Don't replace you Zinsco Panel" article

stumbled across thid on the internet. Gotta laugh, kiringe, and get mad, all the same time

link to article

I have seen and worked with many Zinsco panels in the past and my biggest complaint with them was no room to work in that panel. They were very tight fitting and the use such small screws for the breakers. They even had breakers that you just pushed the wire into the breaker not screws to turn.

That thread is a bit dated .... you might notice a few of us have posted to that thread already.

I'll have to go back and look. I was on the fly looking for something else and quick flipped it over here. Just thought it was funny in the search engine of replace, replace, replace articles was don't do it.

Just had a good look at that discussion... IMO if the overload trip characteristics are known (in Europe and all other parts of the world that use DIN rail equipment the curves are standardised) testing the overload trip would be easy.

For example, most breakers are supposed to trip within 1 hour at 1.45x the nominal current, so testing is just a matter of connecting a known overload and measuring trip time. An overload trip is also considered less likely to damage the breaker than a short circuit trip which involves much higher currents. If done by an individual that doesn't equal an official listing, but it should be well possible to test breakers with that method under official lab conditions.

I once had a breaker with an unknown (ancient) trip curve and used that testing method to at least guesstimate the time trip curve. It was a 10 amp breaker, so I started with 12amps which caused it to trip after about 30 minutes. Then I went to 16 amps which tripped it in less than 2 minutes. Certainly not scientific (particularly since I only had one breaker to test) but more than a good guess.

Interesting link article, although almost 6 years old. Interesting comments, regarding 'testing', and more interesting on the 'how to refurb' the Zinsco buss!