On Feb 26, 2:47*am, wrote:
On Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:49:44 -0500, Nate Nagel
wrote:

the two wire nuts inside the box. *When I wiggled the neutral, the light
would flicker. *Not good! *removed wire nut, here it didn't have any
spiral steel insert and was very loose on the wires. *Some electrician -
presumably back in 1948! - didn't notice it, and here it was to freak me
out 60 years later... *A new wire nut out of the electrical drawer and
all is working fine now

An electrician is supposed to check to be sure the metal spiral is
inside each and every wirenut. *This guy must have been drinking on
the job. *

L:
Maybe there never was a spring. It could be an old porcelain wirenut.
Of course, in that case, the wires should have been twisted tightly
enough
beforehand to make good contact.

That BX and all older cloth coated wire was not as bad as
many people want to make it out to be. I have worked on some that was
70 years old and still in good shape. The biggest problem was the
color came off the white or red. Colored electrical tape helps with
that. If it lasted that long, no one can say it was junk. Will
today's new wire last that long? I guess no one will know until then.
Plastic gets old and dry and will crack in time too.

I wonder about this, too. I have one circuit with some plastic Romex
that
is old enough to have a 16 gauge grounding conductor. It's gotten
pretty
hard over the years - not enough to be brittle...not yet. Of course,
THHN's
nylon jacket should last a very long time, even if the thermoplastic
layer is
compromised.

A P