R&R Porcelain Light Socket Problems

[Casey69]

So I bought some swanky LED shop lights at Menards during Black Friday weekend to brighten up the garage. They shop lights had plugs, so I needed to swap out the porcelain fixtures that included a bulb with one that had a pull-chain & outlet.

So I r&r'd all 4 fixtures & turned on the lights, but no light, - I did pull the pull-chains a few times to make sure. I put in the old porcelain fixture (with no outlet) on what appears to be the box that feeds the rest of the lights in the garage & now have working lights.

So could I have a bad fixture? Something else?

Figured this was going to be easy-peasy; remove old fixture & install new one. Not a huge deal, as I can still make it work, but would like to have that first porcelain fixture in the series have a shop light plugged into it.

Thoughts? Hope this makes sense...

 

[AffableCurmudgeon]

The pull switch and the socket should be pretty easy to test on the bench using a continuity tester/multimeter. Have you tried that?

 

[matt_i]

You should also install the ground wire on the ground screw.

As above, basic multimeter testing first "dead" for continuity between the screws and the blade-sockets. Next you can very carefully energize this and check the screws for ~120vac between hot and neutral, hot and ground. Next check the blade-sockets for same.

There is also the option, if you have the deep 2-1/8" octagon box, of pulling the porcelain-ish fixture completely and putting in a duplex outlet. Raco makes a coverplate for this app which i find at home D. The twin-tube fixture should be light years (pun intended) brighter than the screw-base bulb, so not sacrificing a lot there. The only downside is this coverplate doesn't overlap the edges of the drywall to cover any inconsistencies between cutting the clearance hole in the drywall and the side of the box.

 

[BillK]

Casey,
Make sure that the led light is going all the way into the socket. I bought some about a month ago to use in a wall fixture at home and they will not work. The outer part of the lower section of the led bulb is too big and does not allow them to go all the way into the socket and make contact with the center contact I forget what brand the ones were that I bought. I took them back and got a couple of GE's and they worked fine.

 

[AffableCurmudgeon]

Casey,
Make sure that the led light is going all the way into the socket. I bought some about a month ago to use in a wall fixture at home and they will not work. The outer part of the lower section of the led bulb is too big and does not allow them to go all the way into the socket and make contact with the center contact I forget what brand the ones were that I bought. I took them back and got a couple of GE's and they worked fine.

Excellent point. I had the same issue with the bulb bases in one of my garage door openers when I replaced the incandescent bulbs with LEDs. I pulled up the bottom (live) prong on the garage door bulb base and screwed in the LED light bulb and it then made contact.

However, I took OP's post to mean that he was not getting power to the receptacle built into the porcelain lampholder and therefore his plug-in shop lights were not working.

 

[Doug Arthurs]

Is the polarity correct? Try switch the wires on the terminals.

 

[Gerald O]

Is the polarity correct? Try switch the wires on the terminals.

This will have absolutely no effect. AC current does not have "polarity".
For safety, keep the white (neutral) on the bright screw and the black (hot) on the brass.

 

[Gerald O]

Casey,
Make sure that the led light is going all the way into the socket. I bought some about a month ago to use in a wall fixture at home and they will not work. The outer part of the lower section of the led bulb is too big and does not allow them to go all the way into the socket and make contact with the center contact I forget what brand the ones were that I bought. I took them back and got a couple of GE's and they worked fine.

This may help with a bulb in the socket, but my read of the OP says that his shop lights plugged into the "outlet" (outlet) do not light. I'm guessing that there was/is a poor connection at the wire nuts connecting the pigtails and rest of the lighting circuit.

 

[dw1]

If its plugged into the outlet on the lampholder that's upside down, it looks to me that the outlet part of the lampholder has its own brass screw (there is not a wire connected to it) lights wouldn't work!!
Just to throw this out there, it probably was never hooked up, suppose to be GFI protected

 

[Casey69]

thanks guys.

i wouldn't think it'd matter if the LED bulb wasn't secured to the socket, but i'll give it a whirl.

i'm obviously not very experienced with electrical work. the light fixture that could be "bad" had more wires in the box than the remaining fixtures. i'm guessing that means they'd be wired in series & if power wasn't flowing through this upstream fixture?

in my last pic (w/ my finger), the missing wire is the ground. i'll hook it up.

sorry guys; i know i'm horrible with the terminology. i also don't know how to test the fixture that could be bad with a continuity tester. i could check out some videos on youtube, but i have a menards right down the street from me, so i might just get a new one.

like i said, i have working lights now; i was just going to plug in a shop light for each of the four fixtures in my garage to these new fixtures with outlets. worst case scenario, i can use three of them.