Remember THIS doozy of a thread of mine?
http://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?t=6398
Followed by THIS beauty?
http://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?t=6607
Fast forward three weeks of doing no work, I finally get to the boatyard to wire like the wind, and this is what happened:
The panel is wired, and I want to connect the 15amp line to the outlet. I connect the wires, plug into shore, hit the main breaker and that line breaker on, and I'm in business. Brrrrrrrrrrr goes my drill when I test. I'm a happy man.
I turn everything off, screw the outlet to the metal receptacle/box, and as soon as I turn power back on, it immediately trips the main breaker off.
First I'm thinking that maybe when I had to squeeze those lengths of wire into the box, something got screwed up. So I remove it from the box, test again, and it's fine. I reattach it to box, then it's NOT fine.
Finally, I remove it from the box, it's fine again, and all I do is thread ONE of those screws just like ONE revolution, just making contact with the box.
And it trips off immediately.
So in other words, if I was using a plastic box, it would be fine right? But why is this happening? (I wired it exactly per Jack and Jim's instructions.)
After discussing it with a friend, is it possible that some insulation wore off where the wire goes through the punchout of the box, it's making contact with the box, and THIS is causing it to short?
But those little butterfly things with the holes that attach to the box have nothing to do with the workings of that outlet anyway, right?
Any ideas? I am REALLY disgusted right now.