WAGO 221 Lever Nuts: Testing the Most Common Negative Feedback

how's it going you guys it's Scott with everyday home repairs now you know I am a big fan of Wago 221 lever nuts I think they are perfect for diy-ers taking on electrical projects around the house and believe it or not they do not sponsor the channel I'm just a fan and I personally have to use them for a couple years now for all the projects around the house and that's what I have in my standard pack out setup I have mostly Wago Laver nuts to make any of the electrical connections I'll be making now they're easy to use I like the transparent housing you can actually see what's going on internally and I believe they make a more consistent robust connection as compared to wireless especially when bringing together solid and stranded wire like on a light fixture but with that said there is one consistent drawback that I get in my comments which I actually agree with and I think this might be a flaw in design so today I'm going to scratch my own itch I'm going to actually test out this flaw and see if it's an issue that we should be concerned with so let's jump into it so first let's take a look and see what we're actually dealing with so here is a San Wagga 221 and this is a 413 the 400 series can handle up to 12 gauge wire so it's going to be the most common that you're using at home now the lever nut itself has a small detent position when you click it down and you probably can't hear that but it kind of wants to stay seated there flat in the fully closed position but with very little Force you can start to open that up now once you get to this position barely open you do have to overcome the internal spring to get that to go ahead and set in the over centered position fully open and then just a little Force we'll snap that back down now the problem comes in when we start to put wire Within These Wago lever nuts so here is a 14 gauge wire you can see we have it fully seated there we'll go ahead and close that lever and now we can see we're fully closed but I can very easily open that lever up to about half of its travel so that is the concern when you're tucking these back into the box the levers can pretty easily open up like that so the question being will that compromise our overall connection here of the copper on that bus bar is that going to impact that solid connection thus resulting in additional heat or failure down the road so this is the main point of contention and it is not ideal the question is does that compromise the holding force of this so let's go ahead and do a pull test with the wire nut and the levers fully down and then a pull test with that lever sticking out where it can stay and see if that lessens the amount of weight that can actually be held by this connection so pretty simple testing set up here I have a works jaw horse which is is going to provide a stable platform for me to hang a adjustable weight kettlebell from a three wire a Wago two two one four one three where I'm able to pass that wire through the jaw horse set the 413 on top and then apply all of that Force Through the middle slot on that Wago which I'll start at 20 pounds of force pulling down and I'll increment up by two and a half pounds until we get the wire to pull out and then that will be our failure pull force in the standard condition I'll repeat that for three different connectors each time swapping out the connector to a French connector and also cutting back the copper so we don't have any damaged copper for each run now after those three intervals in the standard connection we should get a consistent reading for the pull out force and then we'll do the same thing but we'll just pull that lever out to see if it reduces the overall amount of force needed to pull that wear out and if we have a design issue so kicking off that standard configuration load lever fully seated not pulled out we'll start off with 20 pounds let it sit for about 10 to 15 seconds and I'll add two and a half pounds here with the ankle weight once it passes that at 22.5 pounds I'll reset it go to 25 pounds see if it can hold that and basically we're going to go till failure and then once it fails like that at 27.5 pounds now we know it can hold 25 that was the last successful interval that it was able to hold so 25 pounds of pull out force was our trial number one force now we're at 22.5 for our second trial we'll reset to 25 again let it hold for 10 to 15 seconds go up to 27.5 okay so we're consistent trial number two also at 25 pounds that was a successful force that it could hold now going to trial number three starting at 20 pounds going to 22.5 looks like it's going to hold and we'll reset that for 25 pounds and then finally try for 27.5 and again we have a failure so the normal setup for the Wago 221 25 pounds it can hold on this test now obviously these results aren't overly accurate but we should now be able to test this position where that lever is out does that reduce the amount of holding strength that the Wagga lever nut has is this a design flaw and something that should be addressed so let's do the exact setup three trials but now with that lever sticking out starting off with the first trial will be 20 pounds see if it holds looks good 22.5 but we did have a failure now look closer this is what it looks like with that lever extended you can see it's extended quite a ways and that's the setup we have for this test so for round two we'll trim back that copper install a new Wago 221 extend out that lever again starting at 20 pounds adding two and a half and it can't hold so both the first and second trout were only able to hold 20 pounds let's go on to try file number three starting off with 20 and again we have our third failure so in that configuration with the lever out we do only get 20 pounds of holding Force as compared to the standard lever down configuration where we got 25. I was a little surprised honestly with the results now that's not going to deter me from using Wagga lever nuts but it is something you need to pay attention to when you're placing your neutrals and your Hots and your grounds back into the electrical box but as always I want to hear your feedback so jump down in the comments and if you haven't tried out while it goes you just want to give them a spin you can see a link in the description over to our Amazon store and in the electrical section we have some small kits with two wire three wire and five wire which is a pretty low barrier of Entry to get a few just to test them around on some of your projects to see if they're right for you now if you want to dive deeper on Wagga lever nuts and see one of the main applications that really sold me on the lever nut opposed to a wire nut or a wing nut check out this video right here and it's a classic example that diy-ers get tripped up on so thanks for joining me on this video and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 93,901

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Id: Z88iayrQdqQ

Length: 7min 24sec (444 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023