Need 220vAC electrical help - change 4 prong outlet to 3-prong

[aczlan]

OK thanks. The wire colors are White Black Green. The "white" wire is faded (to look like red in the pic).

SO.... What you are saying is ---- black and white (the two hot legs) must be across/opposite each other? If thats the case then GWXY does not help me. What if you look at the prong end of the plug? What is the prong with the "hook"? If that is either neutral or ground, then across is the "other" cross pair. So my hots go on the OTHER two prongs. Is this right?

X and Y are hots, G is ground. Leave W unconnected.

Aaron Z

 

[Sodo]

Excellent excellent excellent.....

I shall compress air today.

 

[Mark @ Everlast]

xy should be white/black or red/black

 

[BukitCase]

Sodo, I hope your compressor is smaller than mine, or your genny will just grunt and pop it's breaker - I know a dumb-***** (quite close to me ) who, during the last power outage, forgot to disable his compressor when back-feeding house from genny (my genny is 7kw running) and it took him a while to figger out why the genny wouldn't put out any voltage

Finally, logical troubleshooting won the day; unplugged compressor, reset breaker on genny, much better...

Compressors tend to have a pretty heavy inrush, so if yours isn't too large your (slightly larger than mine) genny should be OK (now that you haven't shorted the two 120 legs together :laughing

Can't understand why my (5 horse Baldor, 80 gallon) compressor wouldn't start - after all, it only draws 50 amps @ 240 volts to start, and 22 amps to run :laughing: ...Steve

 

[Sodo]

8,000W generator, 2HP compressor. (2HP ~ 1500W)

But Steve you bring up a really good point & thanks for the reminder. If I use the L14-30 plug,,,, it can be attached to the generator while the welder is plugged in too. I don't want the compressor to ever start up while welding. Maybe I should put a NEMA 6-50 plug on the compressor so the welder must be unplugged to run the compressor. (have only one 6-50 outlet).

 

[BukitCase]

Absolutely - when running on a genny that's just big enough for one job, having another high inrush load kicking in is NOT a good plan.

My compressor and welder outlets are on a single 70 amp breaker and I have no problems with that, but I'm NOT on a genny either - and somehow, the power company's 370 Jigawatt :laughing: power doesn't seem to have a problem with extra inrush - a couple times I've been welding 5/32 7018 on 3/4" plate when the compressor kicked in, and I never even noticed.

For that to be true running on a genny, it'd need to be at LEAST 18 kW surge, and I'm not willing to pay what one of those costs (too many OTHER toys I could use MORE :laughing...Steve