How to repair an extension cord

If your electric extension cord stops working, do not rush to throw it away. It can be easily repaired without the knowledge and diploma of an electrician.

First you need to determine what the malfunction is, in the plug, in the cable or in the block with sockets.

Most often in extension cords, a strand breaks in a cord. In order to find the fracture site and repair the extension cord, we need any consumer that shows when it is turned on, when not. It can be a table lamp, a radio or the same charge to the mobile, if it has a power indicator (most often a red LED).

We turn on the consumer, and begin to bend the wire in different directions every five centimeters, starting from the plug. If the problem is in the wire, then in some place where you bend the wire, the consumer will turn on, for example, a lamp will light up in the desk lamp. This means that it is in this place that the wire is broken.

In order to solve this problem, you need to turn off the extension cord from the outlet, take a knife or scissors and cut a piece of wire at the fracture site, for reliability, back 10 cm to each side. Now we reconnect the wires. If there is soldering iron, excellent, solder the wires, if not, then you need to twist them tightly. Now we take the electrical tape, and isolate each core separately, then twist them all together.

If the wire is broken in the extension plug itself, you need to untwist the plug, cut off 10 cm of the wire, and screw it back. If the plug is not collapsible, then you need to purchase a new one, and screw it into the place of the old one.

But if the wire is whole, then check the extension block. To do this, we disassemble it, and look at the presence of wire contact with copper plates, if the wire is well and securely screwed, then there is no contact between the plug (consumer) and the plates themselves.

To clean all the contacts you need to take a file, and remove the plaque from the metal. If the coating is green, it means that moisture has got into the carrier, if it is black or gray, it means that the plug (consumer) has bad contact with the plates. For good contact, we clean everything to a copper shine, and bend the copper plates to each other, the plug should tightly enter the block.

If copper plates have through holes in the places where the plug contacts the plates, it is also better to replace such a block.