telephone plug wiring

Hi,

I am trying to fit a telephone extension. I found the:

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site that has been recommended here before.

I have had no problems with wiring the socket. I bought a punch down tool for about 7gbp and have wired it:

2 blue/white 3 orange/white 4 white/orange 5 white/blue

I've checked the continuity: everything is fine.

The problem I'm having is those terrible BT plugs! I bought a crimper only to find it was for 6p6c, not bt plugs! I've bought one off ebay for BT plugs but it's not brilliant. Can anyone recommend a good one that doesn't cost the earth?

Anyway, I'm not sure if I am wiring the plugs wrong. The diagrams on this web site show the plugs but with yellow, green, blue, and brown cables rather than the cable colours, so I am unsure what goes where. Am I right to think the photos show the plug upside-down, so that the contacts are pointing up towards you?

It seems to suggest the plug is wired in reverse to the socket, i..e. white/blue, white/orange, orange, blue. Is that right?

Thanks.

Reply to
Fred
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Yes. At the bottom of the page you've given the URL for is the sentence.

"By a masterpiece of technical superiority between them the BSI and BT managed to number the 431A plug in the British Standard as a mirror image of the socket, so when inserted pin 1 on the plug goes to pin 6 on the socket, pin 2 to pin 5 and so on. "

Reply to
Adrian C

I know this is not what you are asking about but I'm not sure why you are needing to fit plugs ..doesn't the phone have a cable and plug that you plug in the usual way to the socket you have fitted . If the cable is not long enough to reach the socket you can get longer ones or extensions or fit another socket in a more convenient place..

Reply to
Usenet Nutter

I hope thats pence, not pounds.

I cant remember which goes where offhand, but a look at an existing socket, plug or lead should tell you

NT

Reply to
NT

Years ago when what the BT engineers called NPJs, new plan jacks, were new and people were having old kit converted to use the new sockets I saw a man in a telephone shop on Leicester market wire a new plug by spraying the wire with aerosol freezer to keep them straight and stiff enough to fit.

Reply to
Peter Johnson

Proper punch down tools cost money.

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you were confusing a proper tool with the plastic chip fork supplied free with the sockets.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

A decent punch down tool is worth having. The plastic "chip forks" work fine while they're the right shape, but they wear out very rapidly. A screwdriver (_any_ tool that goes between the tines) will knacker the tines and cause a poor contact. It works fine when new, it'll corrode in some months and become noisy.

If you're wiring the plugs at all, you're wiring them wrong. Buy them ready attached and don't mess with them. Nor do you need to wire plugs.

The root of the problem is that telephone cables are extra flexible. This means that the insulation and jacket must be extra flexible, also that the conductors must be extra thin (often "tinsel") so that they don't suffer strain fractures in service. Putting a plug reliably onto such a cable is a Black Art that is hard to do reliably, even on a well-set-up production line. It's certainly not a task for hand crimping at home.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

I don't! You wouldn't even get a plastic one for 7p - and they are a complete waste of space. You need a decent metal one - and they cost several pounds each.

Reply to
Roger Mills

Agree that the cable is not the most user friendly but the plugs are IPC (like RJ45 etc) so you just need to cut back the main jacket, trim the wires to the correct length insert into plug and crimp. Simples... I've done it very succesfully with nothing more than the flat bit of dicast metal you get in the packet of BT plugs from a shed and a pair of pliers.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Generally they're not the same. RJ45s come in two flavours: those for Cat5 cables (relatively easy to fit) and those for extra-flexible phone cables (which includes most RJ11s, but the minority of the RJ45s), which suffer the same problems as the "New Plan" (I'm an old AEE too) jacks we're discussing here. They have different designs of crimp internally.

You can home crimp RJ45s designed for solid core Cat5 onto Cat5 and it's no big deal. If you crimp those plugs onto extra-flexible cable you'll get problems (and frequently no connection at all). Even if you try to crimp the correct plugs onto extra-flexible cable, you need to do it in an accurate press to get reliable results.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

The problem is that you cannot see what wire has gone where inside the plug, so I could not see the correct order in a known good plug, nor could I see whether something had gone wrong in the one I had done. I cut off the plug from my first attempt and second time round it worked.

Reply to
Fred

I'm glad you agree it's a black art; I thought it was just my technique that was to blame!

Reply to
Fred

Now that you mention it, neither am I! Looking back it would have been easier to wire an extension socket and have a socket at each end. At the time, I was looking for a temporary extension, which is why I did what I did, but I now agree your method would have been easier. Thanks.

Reply to
Fred

Yes, I had read that which is why I thought what I did. I was just unsure because the pictures didn't show blue, orange, white/orange, white/blue, which would have confirmed that, though I appreciate drawing striped wires may have been difficult. I wasn't quite sure whether I was looking up or down at the plug either. Anyway, its working now, so thanks everybody.

Reply to
Fred

For installation of 1 or 2 sockets, a plastic tool is the way to go. About 30p IIRC. Quite pointless getting a pro tool for such a job.

NT

Reply to
NT

I disagree! A pro tool is not *that* expensive - 6 or 7 quid - which is chicken feed compared with the cost of having to get BT to come out and sort out your c*ck-ups. And it will last for ever. Can you guarantee that these are the only two sockets which you will need to do in your entire life?

I've got numerous tools which I've bought for specific 'one-off' jobs, (where it would have been difficult to justify the purchase using your criteria) - but boy, have they been useful for subsequent jobs!

Reply to
Roger Mills

In the past I've worked in QA within BT Factories Division, on similar crimp & IDC terminals. I've also worked on a big BT project which suffered immensely from Newbury computer terminals using this jack as a networking connector (and not cables that were crimped to BT standards). Later I built the software that measured the force / distance curves for a large number of different crimp machines used by one of the big-name connector makers, including putting these jacks onto this cable.

I know how to crimp these things. I know how hard it is to do them on a well controlled production line. If you want to run SPC over your assembly process, I'll build you the tools to do it. I know nothing about olives. But I know enough not to try and crimp these plugs on myself.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Can you guarantee that you can still find the thing afterwards, when you need it?

I own two Krone tools, and I still find myself using a chip fork. I'm also about to order my third Arrow T50, as I can't find them either 8- (

(But yes, for 7 quid, get the decent tool)

Reply to
Andy Dingley

well, yes. I a friend who DID, tells me that you must expect about 40% failures.

His solution was to re-equip phones with RJ11..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

A 40% failure rate is nature's way of telling you to stop doing that, whatever it was. 40% failure is for breeding tadpoles.

Why would they be any better?

Reply to
Andy Dingley

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