Replacing light fixture

[oregontocal]

The cheap plastic light fixture over my sink developed a mechanical problem last night: the switch doesn't switch any longer. It just moves up and down. When it broke, the light was on, so I had to remove the bulbs in order to turn it off.

Here's the outside of the fixture. The rectangular switch is supposed to go up and down, switching the lights on and off. It no longer does.


This morning I decided it would be easy enough to replace it, so I unscrewed the fixture from the wall. Hmm. Looks like it might be more difficult than I thought as the wires appear to be soldered onto the circuit board (guess that's what it is) on one end, and somehow permanently attached on the other.



Any ideas? As you can probably tell, I'm EXTREMELY mechanically minded.

[avalen]

soldering is easy, you just need a soldering gun and the solder wire. I bought mine at
walmart for about $9 some years ago, and then of course there is the solder wire,
can't remember how much that cost. Its called acid flux. Home Depot is always good
at teaching you the how to's of things like that, the technique of soldering I mean.
Basically you clean off the area and with a hot soldering iron you touch the area to
melt the acid flux wire and when it cools its hardened into the solder joint. The
other way you could fix it is to clip in the middle and put the new one on with a
wire crimping tool. Both ways are easy, but I would probably go with the crimping
method myself. Oh yea, one more way to fix it......just cut the wire and put the
the new one in there and twist the wires together with a wire nut, cheapest way
to do it actually! I've used all these methods over the years. Just remember to match
the wire colors.

[avalen]

the more I think about it, I would use the wire nuts, and when you cut the wires from
the old one, give yourself enough wire to work with to strip the ends and twist the
wire with the new one.
PS...those lights are identical to mine

[oregontocal]

Thank you, Ava. The deed is now done. Actually, I was going to do it myself tonight and bought the new fixture in town today. However, when I got back to the Desert Tower this afternoon, I mentioned to the owner that I needed to replace the light. He offered to do it. I watched. Took him a grand total of about three minutes, and now I know exactly how to do it when it happens to another light, as I'm sure it will.

[avalen]

another chore done, so now tell us, how did he do it?

[oregontocal]

Ava, he did it exactly the way you described. I'd already removed all the screws, so he just cut the wires, stripped them a bit, wrapped the new wires to the old, used the little connectors, screwed it back into the ceiling, and it was done. Too easy.