Troubleshooting a Western Electric 554; no dial tone

[ehbowen]

I just received an eBay special WE 554, physically in decent condition but sold 'as-is', and attempted connecting it to my wall-mount jack out in the garage. No dial tone. I verified that the jack was working properly and could dial out (under VoIP...Grandstream adapter, CallCentric service) with a known good WE 500. The handset works when connected to the 500, and the 500 still gets a dial tone when the 554 on the same line is off-hook, so the adapter isn't seeing the 554 at all. I'm new to telephone troubleshooting, but I do have a good multimeter available. What's my first step?

[andy1702]

It sounds like your 554 isn't going off-hook correctly. I'd say check the hook switch contacts are clean and moving as they should. If it's somehow stuck in the on-hook position the phone will appear dead. Can you try calling it from another phone? If the hook switch is stuck it will probably ring ok but you won't be able to answer, it will just keep ringing when you lift the handset.

[jsowers]

I just received an eBay special WE 554, physically in decent condition but sold 'as-is', and attempted connecting it to my wall-mount jack out in the garage. No dial tone. I verified that the jack was working properly and could dial out (under VoIP...Grandstream adapter, CallCentric service) with a known good WE 500. The handset works when connected to the 500, and the 500 still gets a dial tone when the 554 on the same line is off-hook, so the adapter isn't seeing the 554 at all. I'm new to telephone troubleshooting, but I do have a good multimeter available. What's my first step?

Your first step should be to take a picture of the network in your 554 from above and post it in this thread. Set your camera to a lower resolution please. The forum doesn't accept large high-res (3-4mb) pictures. If you have everything connected as it should be, then if you attempt cleaning of the hookswitch contacts, please use nothing more than a piece of clean paper between the contacts.

You've done well to eliminate the handset from being the problem. Have you eliminated the handset cord too? You do need to have someone call you, or call yourself, to see if the 554 rings and will stop ringing when the hookswitch is lifted. But let's see the wiring first. You could have a short or something connected to the wrong screw. You can also compare its wiring to the 500 you have since it works.

[ehbowen]

When I tested the handset, I used the handset cord from the 554. It's good.

When I dial the number from outside, the 500 rings but the 554 does not. I'm thinking that my next move should be to take an old wall cord and make a temporary jumper, bypassing the plug on the phone, to eliminate that from being the issue. How should it be connected?

Attaching photo of the wiring plate of the 554.

[jsowers]

Disconnect the wall plug from the back of the phone first. Should have red, green and yellow wires. Then connect the phone line to L1 and L2. In your picture those are the bottom left and third from the botttom left screws. See the side of the network for all the locations and names of the network screws. Your slate (black) wire from the ringer should be on L1 and so should the green wire from your phone line. The red wire of the ringer should be on L2 along with the red wire from your phone line. Polarity really doesn't matter, but these are the standard connections.

What is that white wire that's currently on L1? That may need to be disconnected and moved elsewhere. That looks like a wire from the dial that should be over where the handset wires are connected. Look at this wiring diagram and make sure everything is going to the correct screw.

[jsowers]

The more I look at your picture, the more I wonder where the green and slate wires are connected. They don't look like they're connected to anything and should be connected to L1. That may be your whole problem. But the pic is a little dark and hard to tell for sure.

[HarrySmith]

See attached picture. Are the circled wires from your modular plug? If so they are in the wrong place. It may help to remove the ringer so we can see where all the wires are.

[poplar1]

If a phone neither rings nor draws dial tone, it is likely that the line cord is bad, or, in this case, the modular plug on the back of the phone that connects to L1 (green), L2 (red) and G (yellow).


The yellow wire serves no purpose at this time since it was only needed for party lines where the yellow wire was connected to ground (a cold water pipe back in the day).

[poplar1]

Zooming in on the picture, it appears that the slate-green hookswitch wire and the green line wire are both on L1 and the red line wire is on L2, as they should be.

The circled wires are from the handset modular plug:
Red to R
White to R
Black to B
Green to GN

[HarrySmith]

OK, that makes sense. In looking at the wires I could not be sure where they came from but I thought the thickness was the same as what is coming out of the modular plug. I have a test wire for just these situations. I took a half modular line cord and added alligator clips to red & green. I simply clip them on L1 & L2 then plug it in. That eliminate the line cord, the modular connector & wires.

[ehbowen]

Green wall plug wire was on L1; red wall plug wire was on L2; yellow wall plug wire was on G. Attaching a photo of my test set up with ringer removed. Getting ready to test now.

Edit To Add: Well, with the test connection everything operates except the ringer. I get a dial tone, I can dial out, conversations are normal both ways, but incoming calls do not ring. Where to from here?

[TelePlay]

     Regular Member Post


First, I am assuming that you have the ringer and line cord wired correctly on the network. If it is, then the following might apply.

I just read through the complete topic and might have missed it but I didn't see you say the ringer ever rang. Could be a bad ringer (broken wire in the coil or a bad solder joint) or a bad capacitor in the network (between A and K).



You can check the ringer by detaching all of the leads, use two clip wires to connect the slate and slate/red together with a 0.47 uF capacitor between them.

Then use two clip leads to connect line cord red and green to ringer black and red. Call the line and the ringer should ring (hang up after the first ring and disconnect all wires). If it rings, its a bad capacitor in the network.

If it does not ring, it's a ringer with issues.

If you have a multi-meter, you can also check the ringer wiring by clip wiring slate and slate red together and check for resistance between red and black, should be near zero, 100 ohms at the most due to clip lead resistance. If the ringer coil is continuous, then its the capacitor in the network and an external to the network capacitor will fix that.

[ehbowen]

Looks like I have a bad ringer coil. With the slate and slate/red wires connected, I had an open circuit between red and black. I measured it both at the terminal block and also at the soldered terminals on the ringer coil. Thanks for the help.

[TelePlay]

Looks like I have a bad ringer coil. With the slate and slate/red wires connected, I had an open circuit between red and black. I measured it both at the terminal block and also at the soldered terminals on the ringer coil. Thanks for the help.

You may want to try reflowing the solder joints. Jeff Lamb (Ktownphoneco) made me aware of the fact that when WE made the ringers, they used coated magnet wire but when soldering the ends, they did not scrape the side of the wire. As such, the only exposed wire that would attach to the wire was the cross section cut, a very small area. Had that happen to me twice and reflowing the solder adding a bit of new solder fixed both ringers.

Over time, with normal heating and cooling, the copper wire would expand and contract in the coating sometimes breaking that small cross section solder joint. Reflowing the solder joints will reconnect that very small joint.

If that doesn't work, you have a broken wire in the coil and you can either unwind, fix and rewind the coil, find a new replacement coil or find a new ringer (that working as sold).

You can actually narrow down a coil short by connecting your multimeter to to red and slate and then slate red. Then connect black to slate and then slate red. I forgot which wire goes to slate and slate red but what you will find is that half the coil may work, the other with the short will not. You can actually connect the good part of the coil to line red and green and the ringer will work but that is not a permanent fix, just a verification test to check the mechanical operation of the ringer.

I hope that made sense. Lots of "rocket science" testing you can do to understand the problem and possible fixes for a ringer. My background is in science so the above is just the scientific method applied to a problem ringer - change/do one thing at a time and see what happens.

[TelePlay]

     Regular Member Post

If you have a multi-meter, you can also check the ringer wiring by clip wiring slate and slate red together and check for resistance between red and black, should be near zero, 100 ohms at the most due to clip lead resistance. If the ringer coil is continuous, then its the capacitor in the network and an external to the network capacitor will fix that.

I made an error in the above paragraph. The whole intent was to check the connected coils for continuity and using 100 ohms was wrong. I've been told the resistance of both coils connected together when using resistance (ohms) for continuity is about 3600 ohms for a C4 ringer.

All of my phone stuff is in storage due to a house move so I didn't have one at hand to check it and didn't take the time to look it up. No excuse for not doing that. Thanks to the member who made me aware of this.

I think what I was thinking was that resistance from alligator clip leads themselves not making good contact with whatever it is clipped to can be 100 ohms or so, give or take.

I'm still in a bit of post "new guest" mode, a foggy daze.