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electrical question

CaneyRiverDog
Ceiling light in garage quit working and thought blown bulb. I change bulb still no light. Pull light fixture from ceiling box to investigate. There are a at least 6 hot and 6 common wires inside the light fixture. I swapped the standard light fixture and wired exactly how it was wired. Still no light. The three outlets in garage aren't working either but don't know if that was a before or after the light going out.  I've got an open neutral on the outlets which I'm sure goes back to the birds nest in the light box.  The outlets light my meter as hot but will not power anything.

IS there any one here that has any ideas of how to fix this? I'm not an electrician but could get testers and such to fix problem if I knew what to get and how to go about doing it. Im sure they are on the same run but dont know how to trace/ track them down. Testing hot makes me think its just a neutral or bad outlet but don't know how to check things like continuity when they are 30 feet apart. Any help would  be great, cant afford an electrician right now...
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35 comments

Date Votes
  • CaneyRiverDog
    Toolman286 said:
    The whites on the right are not connected to the whites on the left (but the blacks are.) If the green is the ground, it should hook to grounds for everything. Do you have the 3-way switches connected correctly? If your wiring is good, swap our outlets & switches one at a time incase there is a bad one.
    The whites on the right go from switch up to box and connect to each other. The three way wiring is the wiring with grounds in the hole box. The majority of the outlets in the house are two prong. I doubt theres much ground wire line in the home. 
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  • CaneyRiverDog
    varian said:
    continuity is NOT current flow
    True but it will help me establish where each wire runs to.. correct?
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  • Toolman286
    If you're using the black power from the left, you should connect the white neutrals also. If the old wire is BX (spiral armored,) then that should act as the bare ground.
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  • CaneyRiverDog
    Toolman286 said:
    If you're using the black power from the left, you should connect the white neutrals also. If the old wire is BX (spiral armored,) then that should act as the bare ground.
    The four white neutrals on the left were connected, the two on the right come from the light switches and connect together at box.
    The best way to describe the wire is it looks like sardines. It's almost like threaded tar paper with a silver coating. No metal spiral. The diagram I posted is how everything was wired in the box when I got everything pulled out. I bought some plastic connectors that will lock 4 wires together. They're smaller than the wire nuts they had used and a lot safer than those that were just twisted together and taped. Im still not sure how the light remotely worked the way it was wired.  The hot only ran to the hot to the outlets and a hot to one of the light switches.
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  • CaneyRiverDog

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