[G.O. Joe]

This used to be a 20A GFI that had been powering a 600, 430, and inline fan for some time. It was installed correctly by someone else 30 years ago, except that the bare ground wire and the insulated (before it burned off) neutral wire were touching or almost so, as shown. The outlet had no problems until it started smoking. The GFI eventually tripped out, breaker #14 did not. 41 m/f.

[unregistered190]

Originally Posted by G.O. Joe

It was installed correctly by someone else 30 years ago, except that the bare ground wire and the insulated (before it burned off) neutral wire were touching or almost so, as shown. View Image

curious now...thought the nuetral and ground are basically the same thing? no?

so should they be touching?

[rives]

From the arcing around the terminal and the melted plastic nearby, it looks to me like the neutral might have had a loose connection. An arc-fault breaker is about the only thing that is going to catch something like this; it wasn't pulling excessive current, so the breaker wouldn't trip and the power wasn't leaking to ground, so the GFCI wouldn't trip.

Unreg - no, the neutral and the ground are very different. The neutral is a full-time current-carrying conductor, whereas the ground is only meant to carry fault current to ground in order to quickly trip the circuit protection (fuse or breaker). And no, they should not be touching. The only place that the two are supposed to make contact is at the main panel - any sub-panel or branch circuit connections should have the two isolated from one another.

[G.O. Joe]

Originally Posted by rives

From the arcing around the terminal and the melted plastic nearby, it looks to me like the neutral might have had a loose connection.

There was some adhering burnt plastic crud making it hard to say for sure, but I was looking for something like that. All of the wires seemed quite secure until the unit was disconnected, and were even properly turned clockwise as shown on the neutral wire end. The lights had only been on for an hour.