I am replacing my electric range and it was connected to either a 60 or 80 amp circuit breaker that takes two slots in the panel. The wire is aluminum and both the wire in the insulation the bare wire are stranded. The insulation jackets are black and one seems to have a red stripe. The wire was VERY difficult to remove from the terminals on the stove.

The new stove demands 240 and allows connection with either 3 or 4 conductors. At first I thought that I would just install the wire directly into the stove, same as the old one, but, after the difficulty that I had removing the wire, I am thinking that it would probably be a better idea to attach it to some sort of surface mounted box and wire a receptacle.

During the struggle removing the wires, they got a bit roughed up. I would like to cut it back and have as clean and neat as possible connections for the new connections.

My brother-in-law, who helped me pull the wire out, thinks I should have an electrician come and replace the line with a copper line. I am afraid that it would be far too expensive considering the current price of copper. The panel is about 30 feet away from the stove.

Does anyone have any advice? Any wisdom much appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom

For only 30 feet, I have to agree, it will be better that you replace the 3 wire aluminum cable with 4 wire copper. Only needs to be #8. I just bought some for $2.30 per foot at HD, ouch.

The aluminum is not a problem, only the connections are an issue, and those can be done easily to cause no problems. The issue is sharing the neutral and ground. It is allowed, but much better for several reasons to have a separate equipment ground conductor.

So I side with BIL.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tbakry

I am replacing my electric range and it was connected to either a 60 or 80 amp circuit breaker that takes two slots in the panel. The wire is aluminum and both the wire in the insulation the bare wire are stranded. The insulation jackets are black and one seems to have a red stripe. The wire was VERY difficult to remove from the terminals on the stove.

The new stove demands 240 and allows connection with either 3 or 4 conductors. At first I thought that I would just install the wire directly into the stove, same as the old one, but, after the difficulty that I had removing the wire, I am thinking that it would probably be a better idea to attach it to some sort of surface mounted box and wire a receptacle.

During the struggle removing the wires, they got a bit roughed up. I would like to cut it back and have as clean and neat as possible connections for the new connections.

My brother-in-law, who helped me pull the wire out, thinks I should have an electrician come and replace the line with a copper line. I am afraid that it would be far too expensive considering the current price of copper. The panel is about 30 feet away from the stove.

Does anyone have any advice? Any wisdom much appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom

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Thanks for the answer. I ended up taking the cheap way out and buying a surface-mount receptacle to wire the existing aluminum cable into. It was nightmarish! The cable was AWG 2 and incredibly difficult to manipulate. I managed to get pretty clean ends, but getting it all through surface-mount receptacle hole and into the terminals was nearly impossible... The fixture was designed to use AWG4 Aluminum or AWG6 Copper. I don't think it was meant for AWG2 wire.

Well, I finally got the receptacle wired, we energized the circuit and nothing sizzled, smoked or sparked, so we plugged in the new stove and it works great.

I am assuming that the worst thing that can happen with this install is that one of the wire could work its way free of its terminal, but, since it is all so stiff and tight in the box, I don't believe that there is any danger of it shorting between the hots or the neutral. When the bend on the hots relaxes, the wires bend further away, not closer.

***** It was kind of scary working on the 220 for the first time, but the worst thing that happened by far was that I found out that under the exterior insulation was a fiberglass sheath. I was wearing short sleeves and apparently I got fiberglass everywhere in the work area from when I stripped the wire to length. When I finished I discovered that I had managed to mop-up a huge amount with my bare skin. Ouch! *****