[zstroken]

Originally Posted by 4x4dually

If both legs of a single phase motor aren't pulling the same amount of amps...then there is something wrong. It "is" possible. For instance, if a winding starts shorting or some oddball crap, so it is advised to run both thermal overloads. We were merely stating that he could jumper it if he wanted to so he could get it running. On a three phase, you could protect two out of the three if you wanted....but no one in their right mind would do it that way. You wouldn't believe the amount of Nigerian rigged schidt that shows up while doing service calls. It always amazed me what people thought was ok.

Protecting 2 of 3 legs was a common practice for years, overloads are for overloading conditions, fuses/MCP are protection for shorts. Also on a single phase motor if one of the coils starts shorting windings (short out to themselves) then the single overload will still protect, as the impedance of the motor is decreased and the current goes up in the whole circuit. I do agree, that running the 2nd overload won't hurt anything, but I don't see a real scenario, that the circuit isn't adequately protected.