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OT : Light fixture mystery

K

Kajun

Member
Ok guys:

What am I missing . Visiting my aged MIL for Easter . Changed a broken porcelain light fixture in the garage of her 60 year old house . New fixture has current to fixture until bulb is inserted . Once bulb is inserted current disappears . All this proven by current detector device -- device is not broken . I've proved it at many other outlets . Help please -- what in dickens am I missing ?

Kajun
 
Also could be a bad connection on the neutral. The location of neutral line depends how the light box is wire, if the hot goes to
switch box first and then to light fixture or hot goes to light fixture first and then to switch box second. Is the wiring too old
to have a separate ground line?

JimB
 
2x the bad connection, maybe the switch is
no good, perhaps the breaker. Try bypassing
the switch and keep working your way back.
 
Are you referring to voltage as current?

If voltage goes away when you screw in a bulb, there is an open upstream.
 
Did the old fixture work before you took it down or was it so bad it wouldn't work? If it was working its in the fixture . Did you wire nut wires when attaching wirers and did they get twisted together good.
 
Thanks , gents . I lack technical training so "current
" to me means if you stick your hand in there you
get shocked . 😃

House lacks the third & ground wire in its 60 year
old Romex . Can't address whether light worked
just before I attempted my repair ; fixture was
busted . It worked for most of my 49 year marriage
. I tested not with digital device but with cheap
Harvor Freight " beeper - light up" device . Sorry
that I lack expertise to do better but do thank you for
all your help .
 
The little brass blade in the fixture is not really connected to the hot (black) wire screw. As the bulb is screwed in the
blade moves enough to fail the connection. I assume you are putting a volt meter into the open socket to check for volts,
then with a good bulb, nothing. screwing in the bulb with it turned on might show the intermittant issue. Jim
 
Seen that type pf problem many times over the years of working with zap-u-trons. Many times it is caused by a broken wire or a poor connection at a switch or breaker. With a meter or other such tester you read correct voltage but one it has a true load on it you have nothing. So you need to open up the light switch and make sure the wires are nice and tight there and then if that does not fix it work back to the breaker box and check that things are tight there. If those do not work good chance you have a broken wire
 
Likely a bad neutral. What you are reading is feedback from a lesser load than the lamp, like a clock plugged
into another outlet in the same circuit.

Are any other outlets not working? If so, pull that outlet and check the connections. Keep pulling outlets
and switches that you suspect are on the same circuit, you'll eventually find a loose or pulled out wire.
 
VOLTAGE shocks you, CURRENT KILLS you!

<img src = "http://edgysocial.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/will-this-kill-you.jpg">
 
One time many years ago my old man made a mess with the electricity in the kitchen. Sounds much like your problem. He some how got the neutral to float, not in the kitchen but up in the ceiling of the up
staires closet! Took me better than two hours to trace it down and found a loose wire nut. To say the least I checked his wire connections all over the blasted place. It has been brought up on this site about
no ground wire power suplies to out door buildings You can do it but you need a really big chunk of copper pipe. Had a power supply problem years ago where the building was wired 240 Delta"Y". The transformer
out on the pole got a short internally. Power in the building measured 240-240- 480!! Blew the crap out of the controls on several machines and the cooling fans were fried.
 
I kind of had the same problem this week. What I found was the whire wire that is riveted to the bottom of the socket was loose and when I screwed the bulb in it would lose contact and the bulb would not light.
 
Neutral is loose somewhere... Socket, splice, wire
nut, ect... Pull the fixture down and check the wires
feeding the fixture. Then reinstall with either a new
fixture or you will find the problem. It might even be
a splice from a plug feeding up to the box for power.
I've seen a lot of lights that the switch is powered
from the light box.. We always bring power from the
switch to the light, that way if we go on a service
call that we wired I can check power without a
ladder& taking fixture down.
 
saw similar problems several times in the past. These were on outlet circuts however. The outlet was hot with a table lamp plugged in till you plugged in the refrigerator. All went away. Turns out, both times the outlets were wired by pressing the wire into the back of the outlet, rather than using the screws on the side. I went back up the line and changed them to under the screws on the entire circuit. That cured the problem both times I dealt with it and once when I was "long distance coaching". Bottom line, check for loose connections thru the entire circuit.
Be safe,
Tim in OR
 
If there is juice in the hot wire at the fixture the beeper tester should beep whether the neutral is bad or not. If it does not beep at the fixture follow the wire beck with the beeper till it starts beeping. There, you have found it.
 
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