[Capt. Debbie]

You may not have fortitude for this to see if actual overload or not.

Disconnect one line into breaker. Load side is best. With load wire off the breaker, CLOSE the 40amp breaker. Should be 0 amps and nothing happens. Then slowly use needle nose to touch the load wire to empty close breaker side. If it is really over 40 amps ( a lot of current ) you will see a visible spark as you touch before the breaker pops.

If no spark it is NOT anywhere near 40 amps or over. In fact where you touch that load wire will likley have a black burn mark or more where it was touched with that kind of current.

In case you're wondering the wire you're holding is a load and if you drop it nothing happens.

Breakers pop proportional to the overload. They are made to driefly run with slight overload and pop immediately with big overloads like dead shorts.

So a 40 or 42 amp load on a breaker can take minutes to pop. While a 80 or 100 amp short will pop the breaker in a fraction of a second.

Hope that helps you?