Help - One set of LEDs barely light other lights connected to same channel work fine

[Orville]

21 hours ago, TheDucks said:

The  two light fixers are different, but if the old one for Incans still works...save your money for more lights.

I agree with Orville: Dielectric grease. I bought a jar from Amazon.  I dipped the ends of my SPT far enough to cover the place Vampire prongs would enter (a 'acid' brush works, just messy to store if your work area is not permanent). It is a PITA to remove-grease-insert every bulb . BUT. it is a bigger PITA when it dies in the place of use

Especially when they are out of reach and require a ladder to get at, just to replace a burned out LED before that one makes the whole strand go dark! 

When the entire strand goes out, it's almost, but not quite impossible to locate the bad LED and replace it, since you have to move the ladder along the strand line until you locate it!

Dielectric grease, although a pain to do every bulb {LED} will save you a ton of grief in the long run, especially on replaceable LED strands that can, and most will at some point, have the LED leads rust off or the contacts in the socket rust away off the wire.  When that happens you can fix it, just find another socket that's good from an old non-working LED strand and cut out the rusted socket and splice in the new one.  Just don't forget to add the dielectric grease first!

Edited December 20, 2019 by Orville

[DLH lites]

Note of interest, I have had bad vampire plugs this year ,  one roof snowflake with led rope,  would only light very dim  changed both plugs and back in biz,, one tree with red c6,s a vampire plug with lose slide on cover  was making the wire not connect the pins. Plus I have also noted that blue leds go first,  have three strings of 50 led c9 and most of the blues only lasted one year, anyone have an answer to that .  Also the rain just wont let up here in Fort Lauderdale,  GFI's clicking off had to shut it down last night , kinda cleared up today so maybe tonight will work.    

David

[tlogan]

FINAL ANSWER....

I found some time yesterday to try different vampire plugs. Once I got everything on the workbench and started removing the old plugs, I noticed THIS:

It had been raining and then got cold enough to freeze, so my guess is that it was held together by the ice just enough to make SOME contact and solid enough that I didn't notice it. It was sitting in the garage for a couple of days so the wire probably thawed out. Once I started working with it, it was pretty obvious. CRITTER at it again! So far, I haven't found any lights chewed off.

Edited December 23, 2019 by tlogan

[Kapkirk]

Glad you found it, we don't have much ice/snow issues here in Florida but the critters do chew on things, our German Shepard seems to be keeping the squirrels in check, no issues this year so I'll need to reward her with an extra treat.

 

Keith