Rewire oven plug 3 to 4 wire, new home, plug it in and get sparks

[timnels]

I never claimed to be an electrician, but we are moving into our newly built home and (by code) the electrician put in a 4 wire connector for the range. I bought a 4 wire cable and rewired the oven (there we instructions on the back of the oven). I tried plugging it in and sparks and a pop occurred on the back panel of the oven. Probably fried the oven, but that's another matter. Pulled off the oven panel and the wiring looks correct. They have a diagram where each color wire goes, an I have them installed in the correct place and tightened securely. The only thing I am not sure of is I didn't check for a bridge connection between the white wire and the green wire (ground) which I read should be removed in a 4 wire configuration to meet code (although I doubt it is causing the sparks). Am I complete idiot here, or could the electrictian have messed up the wiring. Is there a way I can test it or since the breaker is off, pop the wall cover and make sure the leads are connected in the wall correctly? Thanks.

[William.Deans]

Greetings,

a) are you SURE that you didn't hear the sparks because you introduced a short somewhere? Did you somehow hook up one of the hot wires where a ground or neutral should have been?

b) if you think the original electrician is to blame use a $3 volt meter to ensure that each plug on the 4 prong outlet has the right voltage (240 volts between the two hot plugs, low resistance between neutral and ground, etc)

Hope this helps, William

[Chip C]

Then set the $3 voltmeter to "ohms" mode and check the resistance between each of the four pins of the new range plug. There should be infinite resistance between the ground pin (the round or half-round one) and the neutral (the middle flat one). If it's low, you've left the frame-to-neutral bridge connection on, and it needs to be removed. This is actually the whole point of moving to a four-wire system. But I agree it should not be the cause of your sparks.

There should also be infinite resistance between the hot pins and ground, always; and with all the switches set off (including the oven light) there should be infinite or very high (if there's a clock or something) resistance between the hots and each other, and between the hots, neutral and ground.

You didn't mention whether the breaker tripped when this happened. If it did, you've got a short somewhere.

I'm not sure what you mean by "probably fried the oven". The oven element should be able to take any voltage and current that that outlet can produce. Was the pop from one of the range's internal fuses?

Chip C Toronto

[Dodo]

[e-mail] wrote in news:1124192380.758965.256820 @o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:

Sometimes you (have to) mirror the connections depending on from what side you are looking at a plug or receptacle.