Problems with waterproof 3 wire plugs and extensions

[Ebuechner]

I caught a sale at creative lighting displays and I ordered a bunch of 3 wire extensions and 3 wire whips with waterproof connectors. I'm now trying to use them and test them out and I'm having a very high failure rate. I have ordered the 4 wire connectors from them in the past with no trouble and I was happy. They seem like a decent company and I was wondering if this is normal for the 3 wire connectors. Or do I order from somewhere else to avoid more trouble. I did get everything on sale so this may be a case of I got what I paid for. All of these are 20 gauge wire I know holiday coro sells them with 18 gauge would that make a big difference?

[George Simmons]

Have you shared this with Kevin at CLD? I've never heard of anyone he hasn't taken care of.

Unless you're trying to push a truckload of amperage the wire thickness will not make a difference.

[Ebuechner]

Just trying to get an idea how temperamental these 2811 chips are to voltage drop. They seem to operate on a very narrow voltage band. And I wasn't sure if anyone else had noticed a significant difference with different gauge wire. And I have been emailing them but a replacement would be of the same gauge wire. But we haven't got there yet. Don't get me wrong I think they're a good company and take care of their customers. But I'm asking this question on the forum to get a non biased view on this problem.

[1983ss454]

Some more details about what your doing and what's happening would help

[Ebuechner]

I actually talked to Kevin on the phone and some length last night. He seems like a very nice guy and very willing to help. The problem I'm having with some of the connectors is the plugs aren't making good contact when I connect the plugs they're working intermittently and some of them have failed altogether. I run my own business and I understand problems come up. Kevin runs one of those good businesses where the when the problems come up he takes care of the customer. And that is the difference between a good and a bad business. As far as the other part of my question is has anybody noticed a significant difference between the 20 gauge and the 18 gauge wires. Such as with 20 gauge am I going to have to do a lot more power injection. One of my bigger items is 4 RGB arches with 50 pixels each

[atver]

I experienced a similar problem with the four wire connector but resolved it by inserting and extracting the connector four or five times into its' mating connector.  This seamed to clean the oxidation off the tin lead terminals which resolved my problem.  You might give that a try.