Pendant light fixtures

[jfaberna]

I occasionally notice flickering from my kitchen pendant lights in my 2014 3402RL. It's not the LED lights which are the blade type connections.

So I thought about taking the fixtures down and figuring out how to replace the socket.

The problem I have is understanding how they are put up. I removed the 2 screws holding the fixture and they drop and hang on the wires. I can feel wire nuts through the finger sized hole, but I can't work the wire nuts through the hole like the other wire in the wire nut is restrained somehow. I also noticed another screw through the ceiling under the fixture that holds a piece of plywood in place to support the fixture screws. When I remove that screw the extra plywood piece moves around.

Anyone have thoughts on getting the wire nuts through the hole. I'd rather not cut the fixture lead wire.

[jeffba]

make the hole bigger?

[jfaberna]

Originally Posted by jeffba

make the hole bigger?

It would be a blind cut around wires. I'm not comfortable with that.

Also not thrilled with cutting a bigger hole into the support backing plate plywood since I'm not liking the lack of fixture support as is.

[jcurtis934]

Think the holes in my ceiling were a little bigger than yours. Was able to pull on the wire and use a screw driver blade to get the connection through the ceiling. It would take longer, but you could slowly cut a bigger hole using an exact knife and slowly increasing pressure to cut deeper each time around. Or if you have a dremel, you could make shallow cuts with that to sneak up on enlarging the hole. Hard to know if the flickering is due to a loose connect in the ceiling or the socket in the fixture. With wedge type contacts on the bulb, I would suspect the socket more. And I would have no hesitation cutting the wires and adding connections, but I also have a racheting crimper.

[Arkware]

Jim,

If both bulbs flicker together, maybe the loose connection is at the fuse box?

[mazboy]

be carefull on pulling those wires.. i know.


use needle nose pliers on getting the nuts down one at a time.

[jfaberna]

So problem solved. It was not wiring or socket. My neighbor who is a wiz at fixing electronic problems compared the lead spacing of the original incandescent bulb and the LED wedge socket lights I was using. The spacing of the leads on the LED was slightly narrower than the original incandescent bulb. So any vibration or moving of the bulb worsened the contact of the socket.

So he used a Dremel to create lead channels with the same spacing as the incandescent bulb. The new spread make for a secure and very tight connection.