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Lowe's "Portfolio" 120670 Track Lights: Why they suck
These Flared Step track lights look pretty good, and in the bronze finish they match our dining room chandelier pretty well.
"$14.98! Can't go wrong for this price!" Except... you really can.
These just plain didn't work on our existing (Halo) track. Huh, these tend to be universal, but we'll try a new track.
Another trip to Lowes and an hour later, new track is hung... and only one in four of the fixtures works.
"Okay, WTF. These are getting returned, but I want to open this up and see why they suck first!"
Turns out the weak point is the handy-dandy built-in switch that you will never use anyway. Their design is such that they rely on a not-springy-enough piece of brass to make contact in two points, at either end. Except the switch rocker deforms or twists this part in such a way that it may pull away from one end or another. Crap materials or just cheap design?
It turns out that this switch was apparently retrofit to the existing contacts in a design revision - the hot contact still has a terminal on it where you can reconnect the hot (black) lead internally.
If you can get the lead off without the whole switch coming apart you can just move this wire, or more likely the thing will come apart - you remove the switch rocker, the contact bar, and the existing terminal and contact on the black wire. Reassemble, reconnect the hot wire, and there you go. Wedge all the its back into the base and it should work - no cheap-ass Chinese moving parts to go wrong. (Only cheap-ass Chinese fixed parts now!)
Now the funny thing is, this $15 Lowes fixture looks an awful lot like a fixture from Juno - and indeed, the Lowes one is made by Juno. I woner if the $52 Juno one is any better internally.
I'll also add that I had to remove and reassemble the socket in one of these to get the bulb to point straight. All in all, these things suck, and you probably should avoid buying any track light fixtures from Lowes if you can afford it.
