Quote:
Originally Posted by marty_ell
...there is a constant trickle of knowledge-less people bodging cable repair or rewiring wrongly ('brown is the colour of earth isn't it') and coming to grief.
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That was certainly the assumption made by whoever had wired the plug onto an electric drill I bought in the local household auction a few years ago. Blue wired to neutral as it should be, but brown to earth and nothing to line. The best of it was that it came with a PAT label attached by the auction house - presumably because their idea of a Portable Appliance Test is to plug the item into the tester (without switching the item on) and check that it doesn't give a "fail" reading.
Had the test been done properly (which includes inspecting that the plug is wired correctly and with an appropriate fuse, as well as using the tester in a rather more thorough manner) it would have been a fail and a fail. Fortunately, the lack of proper testing was to my advantage, given that it gave me some years of faithful service once I had corrected the plug wiring after being disappointed that it didn't work when I first plugged it in on getting it home.