Strange colours in telephone extension

[artzybashev]

Hi everyone,
I have a telephone extension which I am wanting to fix directly into the master socket but on stripping back the wires I discover some unusual colours and some different colour tails attached (see photo).

IMG_1319.JPG (80.59 KiB) Viewed 7528 times

The wires are all solid, blue, red, orange and white. The tails attached are yellow onto blue, green onto orange, red on red and black onto white. As green, red, black and yellow are the old four strand colours, I presume the tails are attached here to indicate the colour they are intended to represent.

Following the colour equivalent chart (see attached also) I have wired the connection as follows:

phone colours.jpg (32.45 KiB) Viewed 7528 times

orange (with green tail) in number 5 which would be white / blue dash in new colour
blue (with yellow tail) in number 3 which would be orange / white dash in new colour
red (with red tail) in number 2 which would be blue / white dash in new colour

The extension is completely dead. Where have I gone wrong in this process? Have I misunderstood these colour equivalents?
Before dismantling the extension it was working fine when plugged in as a socket.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[kellys_eye]

Why the 'direct' connection? A simple line splitter would save the hassle and make it removable (if required).

Most phone sockets use pins 2 & 6 for the line.

[Someone-Else]

sorry its 2 & 5.

But yes, why not buy a whole new socket, easier, and less hassle

[artzybashev]

Hi,
Thanks for the quick replies. The reason I wanted to wire this in is because I already have a line plugged in the socket and since the option exists to wire a second line inside the box, it is tidier than a splitter hanging off the front. The extension line is buried through the house and not easy to replace with a new one. Now the wires have been stripped back I either need to wire it into the box or fit a new plug and use a splitter. Either way, I need to figure out how these colours should go. Do you think the coloured tails are meant to indicate old colours? I know 3 is just the old ringer wire but it does no harm to fit it. 2 & 5 should be working though. Could try some trial and error I suppose.

[kellys_eye]

amazing what a slippery finger can do .....

[camallison]

Far-Eastern manufacturers of such cables/sockets quite often just put in whatever colours they fancy and so it might be best to ring out the pins in the socket to the cable ends. I have seen this many times and been caught out by it like you. A simple multimeter check on the ohms range should suffice (if you have a multimeter, of course!).

Colin

[artzybashev]

Far-Eastern manufacturers of such cables/sockets quite often just put in whatever colours they fancy and so it might be best to ring out the pins in the socket to the cable ends. I have seen this many times and been caught out by it like you. A simple multimeter check on the ohms range should suffice (if you have a multimeter, of course!).

Colin

Hi,
Thanks for all the replies. I think you are right about the random wiring. I have sorted it now. The answer was a follows.
2 white
3 red
5 blue

should have ignored the colours and followed their positions in the discarded plug socket in the photo. Over-complicated the whole process for myself.

Thanks everyone.