WE 302 from 1948: Help confirm correct modern wiring?

[jkeylon]

Hello all,
Can anyone help confirm this little 302 is wired correctly for todays modern house. Just looking to use it as a power outage-safe phone, without it overloading or frying any other phones or outlets in the house. I found it in a local antique salvage shop and it was in OK condition, but I'm trying to check it out thoroughly before I plug it into the wall and blow something up!

It's already been updated to accept the modern 4 wire modular plug straight into the unit (you can see the grey female jack), I'm hoping this was done correctly? The grey female jack part is not something I recognize, can anyone place it/where to buy? I would like to update it to black or at least find a new one, this one is hanging by a thread.

Other than that my bells sound great and the rotary dial is pretty even on rotation. Any other info that you can tell just by looking at the photo would be of great value! Thanks! -jkeylon

[poplar1]

You will need to move the red ringer wire from GND to L1. You might also want to loosen the tension on the spring that is between the two ringer coils: it is in the highest tension possible right now which may keep it from ringing if you have a lot of other phones ringing. If it rings OK then you can leave it alone; otherwise, I'd move it to the middle position...The gray jack is from a later desk phone (rotary 500 or Touch-Tone 2500); it is OK that it is moving around; better to leave it that way than to cut a notch in the phone! Any standard modular line cord will fit in this.... You need 4 leather feet: I can send you some if you want.

[jkeylon]

Hi Poplar1,
Thanks for all the info! This is great. Do you know why or what the red ringer wire is doing there? I think L1 is already being used? (that's the one directly above the bell?)
I'll loosen the tension to the middle position.
Yeah the grey jack was sloppily epoxied at some point, I'll leave it but secure it with no notches, no cutting!!
Wow you saw I'm missing the feet. They are missing in action. If you can spare them I would be extremely grateful!!

Any advice on oiling the spring/governor (or anything else) as long as I have it open?
Thinking of polishing outer bakelite too...I'm hoping my 6" bench polisher/cloth wheel won't eat into it on low temps, what do you think?
Thanks.

[poplar1]

If the dial is working you probably should leave it alone. Never use WD-40 on any dial because it will eventually gum it up. As for buffing, the housing (cover) is soft plastic not bakelite so you have to be careful not to burn it on a wheel. The handset is bakelite. There are others here  that know a lot more about cleaning and polishing than I do...The red ringer wire is currently on GND because on a party line half the bells were connected to L1 and ground, and the other half L2 and ground. Modern lines don't have any ground connection on the yellow wire, so a ringer connected to GND is not connected to anything and won't ring.

[jkeylon]

The dial could work a lot more smoothly I think. From the inside sounds like quite a bit of dirt in there. Was thinking of using silicon spray (never WD40).
How do you tell that it is plastic? I was told by someone that it was bakelite.
I see this was a party line phone. OK.
Thanks.

[poplar1]

302s were never made of bakelite, other than the handset. I believe it is called tennite, in any case, soft plastic.