A myriad of electrical gremlins can come to light with a car’s age—bad terminals, broken wires, blown fuses, and even fried relays. Knowing how to diagnose those problems can be the difference between ...

Q. I installed a dimmer switch in my dining room and now the chandelier only works half the time. There are two switches in the room that control the light. They worked fine before I started the job.

Use the same techniques to terminate wires to receptacles as you did for switches: Strip off the insulation, make a hook or slide into a clamp, and tighten. The terminations will be different, though.

It is a device used to manage electrical flow within a system. In air conditioning units, it regulates the connection between various components, like compressors and fans, to control cooling and ...