Le Projecteur ne fonctionnent pas

On opposite sides of our Gite are 400 watt halogen floodlights, one on the courtyard side and one above the patio. These floodlights are quite useful, both for unloading the car if we arrive back late at night and for chilling out in the evenings.

Unfortunately the halogen bulbs in these floodlights don't seem to last all that long and I frequently find myself up a ladder when we stay at the Gite, putting in a replacement bulb.

I brought over some spare halogen bulbs from the UK and once again I found on our arrival that both floodlights were not working.

So up the ladder, unscrew the cover and I quickly fixed the courtyard floodlight as the halogen bulb was black and clearly burnt out. Put a new bulb and the light worked perfectly.

Carried the ladder round onto the patio and expected the same operation with the second floodlight - but it wasn't to be.

The existing halogen bulb looked good and as if it were still working, but I swapped it anyway, but still it didn't work.
Wiggled it left, right, forwards, backwards, but still couldn't get it to work. Of course the fact that it was after 9pm at night when I was trying to fix the light did rather make it harder to diagnose the problem!

Next day (in daylight!) back up the ladder and I disassembled the light completely to see if I could find out why the new bulb didn't work.

The picture below shows what I found, one of the screw terminal connector blocks for the cable to the motion detector was black and had completely melted - methinks this might be the source of the problem?

Anyway I decided after a bit of fiddling that replacing the connection wasn't on as there was probably something fatal in the motion detector that had caused the overload and meltdown. I thus unscrewed the motion detector from the floodlight and rewired it so that the light worked without it.

Put it all back together and as the second photo shows, the floodlight looks (and works) as good as it always did.

I've added a note on my to do list to buy a replacement motion detector from eBay when I return back home and I'll fit it on my next trip to Brittany.