"I'm using a touchless voltage tester."

Not a reliable way to troubleshoot wiring.
They sense voltage through capacitive coupling and are easily fooled.
You would be better off with a regular voltmeter.

Get a meter with a needle. Even digital meter can get fooled.

Just to be clear, I'm talking about the circuit testers by Sperry (yellow one) and GB (red + black one) with the plastic tips. So you do touch, but it's not a probe. Signals were plain as day, strong or absent with every pull of the switch as described above. Point taken on the voltage tester, but does that really sound like misreading on this fan? Everything was solid and consistent.

Thanks.

Reread JOED's comments. Your touchless voltage device is great for making sure you are not about to touch a potentially live circuit, but it can very well give false positives

My guess is to look at either the base of the socket for the bulb or wherever in the fan housing the wires from the individual lights come together. I suspect he "stretched" the wire out of whatever connector was in use.

Those testers can give false readings. They can be good for basic troubleshooting but when you start getting readings that don't make sense(like you are getting) it's time get out the real meter.

I have a cieling fan light kit problem of my own. I am trying to put on a light kit. The voltage supply from the fan to light kit is however only 49V or so. The kit requires use of max 60W candelabra base bulbs. Should the voltage be 49 V or the full line voltage of 120V? Also, I would expect the bulbs to light up even on 49V albeit dimly. The bulbs hoewver do not light up at all. I have checked for all continuities and they are ok. I am getting 49V in all three bulb sockets. But when I put the bulb in, it does not light up. I tried to supply it 120V direcly from an outlet and the bulbs lit up fine. Any help?

I suspect your light wires aren't connected to anything (or perhaps an open switch). The 49V is just inductive coupling read by your way too high impedance digital meter.

You nailed it ronnatalie. Earlier this evening, I figured out by chance that the lights were being controlled by a separate wall switch. When I switched it on, lo and behold everything worked. I dont quite understand your "inductive coupling" comment but yes it was a cheap digital meter. I will google around to try and understand what you meant. Thanks.

Imagine a transformer. You've got a lot of loops of the wire in the proximity with a lot of loops of another wire. THe current passing through the first induces current to flow in the other. Now stretch out those loops into a hundred feet of straight wire. You still get a little current forced to flow in another wire from the current flowing in another, but it is so weak that it won't power anything. However your digital meter is VERY SENSITIVE, it doesn't hardly take any current flow to make a voltage reading. In many cases this is what you want...you don't want to disrupt the circuit by taking a reading, but in this case you are reading this very weak amount of current.

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