Congratulations! Your range cord is equipped with the new, four-cord pigtail, which is required by the latest National Electrical Code (NEC). Your outlet, however, is out-of-code and should be upgraded to the new four-prong style.

Ok, here’s whatcha do. Feast your Vulcan squinties on this anatomy of your existing three-prong range outlet. If you were to remove the cover of that outlet, you’d see that the outlet box itself was tied to the neutral wire. This is a bozo no-no and is ezzacly what the new four-prong outlets are eliminating ’cause they require that the ground wire be separated from the neutral wire. Here’s the basic anatomy of a typical four-conductor range outlet.

One other thang. Since your existing outlet is out of code, the electrical cable from the circuit breaker box to the outlet will need to be upgraded, too. Your existing cable is probably 6-3W, meaning is has three, #6-gauge wires sheathed inside the cable. You’ll need to upgrade to 6-3W/G which includes a separate grounding conductor.

Still got questions? We got answers in the Appliantology Group. Come see us. Fix y’up. Whatever.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2004 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Oven Repair, Range Repair, Stove Repair. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Or, you can jump to the homepage.