I wanted to borrow the lead from the last charger I got. When I opened it up, this is what I found. The wire colours are reversed. I mentioned a few days ago that it's quite common, but I thought maybe it's an old problem. Clearly, they're still doing it. It seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Be careful if you ever have to change a lead or connector on a charger. Always use a meter to check. Disregard any markings or colours.

It's a bit naughty them using brown and blue the 240v live and neutral standard. Perhaps they'd run out of red and black.

7 hours ago, Benjahmin said:

It's a bit naughty them using brown and blue the 240v live and neutral standard. Perhaps they'd run out of red and black.

It's been like that for 15 years, so not likely the spool of wire ran out.

If China origin then any colour can be game.

Blue / brown is an EU standard we've adopted, and even we don't have a standard for re-purposing mains flex for DC, just "brown looks a bit like red" etc.

Perhaps "When brown is red, you are dead!", is an easy to remember chant among nimble fingered Chinese child factory worker slaves.

Like red, blue is a bright colour, stands to reason it must be live. Why would it be colourful if it wasn't live? Makes no sense. Dead things aren't usually colourful, at least not for long.

Edited 13 hours ago13 hr by guerney

The blue (neutral) and brown (live) colours are those for AC voltages as defined by various regulations since 2006.

No such colour coding exists for DC as far as I know. You can see that in cars for instance.

Yes, black is normally zero volts and red is the positive. It's interesting to see in some old nomenclature that the red was sometimes referred to as 'live'.