Do you Wago?

[ctechbob]

I won't be in the future. When I installed the heater upgrade to my Coleman Mach 15 I simply re-used the Wago connectors that Forest River used when they built the camper.

This weekend, the heat worked fine the first night. Saturday we actually wanted to run the AC a bit as it was getting pretty warm inside and the wife wanted to take a nap. About an hour of running the AC and I heard a *POP* followed by an electrical smell.

I figured I had a bad control board in the new control box for the heater and shut everything down. A few moments later, I ran through all of the functions of the heating system just to check. Everything worked just fine. Just to be safe, we used the furnace for heat on Saturday night since it is a completely separate system from the Coleman.

Today when we got home I pulled the control box down as I figured I would start there. This is what I found:

One completely melted Wago and one partially melted.

They should have been just fine to reuse, but apparently, they were not. I've never been a huge believer in this connection type for high current applications, and I probably won't use them again for that. I actually tend to pull them out of whatever connections I touch in the camper and replace them with crimp style connectors, or wire nuts if it is a 120v circuit.

 

[Wayne]

They should have been just fine to reuse, but apparently, they were not.

Rated for 20 amps in a 15 amp application. Yep, should have worked, obviously didn't. It looks like they had really good contact too.

Is the rating continuous or intermittent?

 

[ctechbob]

The datasheet just says 'Rated Current' so I would expect that to be continuous.

I certainly never expected it to be an issue, but I'm glad that's all it was.

 

[CDX825]

Pretty disappointing to see. I bought two boxes of them to use for servicing hvac equipment. I don't intend on using them on anything high current though. Certain places like oil burner junction boxes you don't have much room to work with so these things should make that a bit better.

I have watched a ton of different videos on youtube about wago connectors and the majority of them showed good results. But having actually had a chance to mess with them now I don't think they lock onto solid wire very tight. You can still move the wire in the connector. Should be okay for low current applications but I will stick to wire nuts for high current splices.

 

[ctechbob]

Pretty disappointing to see. I bought two boxes of them to use for servicing hvac equipment. I don't intend on using them on anything high current though. Certain places like oil burner junction boxes you don't have much room to work with so these things should make that a bit better.

I have watched a ton of different videos on youtube about wago connectors and the majority of them showed good results. But having actually had a chance to mess with them now I don't think they lock onto solid wire very tight. You can still move the wire in the connector. Should be okay for low current applications but I will stick to wire nuts for high current splices.

I honestly have no idea why this one failed. They are the same ones that were in there from the factory when it was just an AC unit and they were pristine when I removed them. They didn't fail running the heater overnight and only failed when we went back to using the AC. Maybe they didn't hold up to being re-used as well as they should have. That is the only thing that makes sense to me since on a solid core wire the clamp could have deformed just enough to make it loose the 2nd go-round.

I like the way they work, if you can handle them being a bit bulky, but I think wire nuts will be in any of the 120v work I do in the camper from here on out. I really like the inline ones though. I might pick some of those up for my next project. Yep, just ordered a stack of them.